Studies in Human Inheritance

Abstract

Abstract One of the most important of the recent advances in immunology is the discovery of clinical manifestations resulting from incompatibility between the blood of a fetus and that of its mother. Erythroblastosis (Levine, Katzin and Burnham 1941) is the clearest instance of such manifestations. Other suggested examples are undifferentiated mental deficiency (Yannett and Lieberman 1944, Snyder, Schonfeld and Offerman 1945); congenital malformations (Snyder 1946a, Wiener 1946a); and blackwater fever as a sequella of malaria (Butts 1945). Further instances are being actively searched for. Discoveries and hypotheses of this sort have raised new problems in the field of population genetics. In order to know whether any disease or anomaly includes a significant proportion of cases that could be due to maternal-fetal incompatibility, it must first be determined how often in the general population a child will be expected to have a specific antigen or a group of antigens which the mother lacks.