This book is based on a conference on perinatal medicine, held in San Diego, Calif, in March 1974, which brought together some of the world's outstanding investigators in the many disciplines that bear on human gestation and perinatal biology. There are 32 papers by 51 contributors, divided into four major sections: "Regulation of Pregnancy"; "Prenatal Evaluation of the Fetus"; "Special Problems in Reproduction"; and "Some Developmental Problems in the Newborn." Some of the papers have direct clinical implications, but many are concerned with basic biology, which forms a foundation on which more clinical presentations can be built. The disciplines represented include cell biology, anatomy, pharmacology, endocrinology, physiology, immunology, and genetics, as well as obstetrics, neonatology, radiology, and, interestingly, economics.
Discussions of the presentations have not been included, and the emphasis has been on collecting important research rather than on completeness of coverage. The pieces of the puzzle do not all