Prenatal Origin of Childhood Leukemia*

Abstract

MANY current studies of the etiology of childhood leukemia are motivated by one of two types of hypothesis — those relating leukemia to chromosomal damage and those implicating viral or other leukemogenic agents. The two types are not mutually exclusive; nor are they clearly separable, since "leukemogens" may operate through the mechanism of chromosome damage. But as commonly applied, the two hypotheses are distinguished by the assumed time of origin of the etiologic agent. Thus, the chromosomal-damage hypothesis, at least as it applies to leukemia in childhood, implicates factors operating during the earliest divisions of the zygote, parental gametogenesis or . . .