Congenital Malformations

Abstract

IT is just over 20 years since an earlier review of ours of the causes and nature of congenital malformations appeared in these pages.¹ When we wrote that report, teratology was a little-known branch of medicine, and the study of teratogenesis was the province of a limited number of scientists. Attempts were under way to discover general and specific causes of birth defects by critical evaluation of family and pregnancy histories, population data, and animal experiments. But it was already clear that the causative factors were heterogeneous and complex and that for the majority of birth defects the knowledge of . . .