PEDIATRICIANS have without doubt done exceptionally well in keeping our children healthy as children, but at the same time they have fallen far short of creating healthy adults. The result is a blind spot in preventive medicine, a gray zone in chronic disease prevention that needs elucidation before progress can be made against excessive mortality related to heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Many pediatricians still consider chronic disease prevention in childhood controversial and intend to wait for absolute confirmation and clarification of the complex etiologic web surrounding the pathophysiology of these diseases. Cautiously worded articles have labeled atherosclerosis as a "pediatric disease," but have advocated screening and intervention only among those children at high risk,1 particularly those whose parents have suffered premature heart attacks (be-, fore 50 years of age) even though the children may be grown up by then. We have at least agreed that prevalence studies are