Perhaps more than other clinicians, the pediatrician is being called on to offer genetic counseling. Basic to his effectiveness is an acquaintance with available facts. Unfortunately, as even the casual journal reader can testify, such an acquaintance, hard enough to initiate, is even more difficult to maintain. With advances in biochemical genetics, chromosome anomalies, pedigree analysis, and so on, the science of genetics has taken on new life, new vigor, and developed new concepts. Professor Penrose's offering is intended to supply the reader with selected and detailed presentations from the broad field of human genetics with enough advances "to whet the reader's appetite for descriptions of other points of the subject elsewhere."
In his own chapters, the editor depicts what is known of mutations as well as the broader topic, "The genetics of growth and development." Both presentations achieve his specified aim of mental-appetite stimulation. Harnden reviews progress in chromosomal