"The marked disparity between incidence and mortality trends
crystallises the problem posed by childhood leukaemia from a
public health standpoint: we have become steadily better at
treating it at least in the sense of preventing children dying
from it but we have made little or no progress in preventing it.
Rational approaches to prevention are difficult to formulate
when so little is known about the cause," Professor Michel
Coleman will tell experts at the first international scientific
conference on the causes of childhood leukaemia. The conference
Childhood leukaemia: incidence, causal mechanisms and prevention
has been organised by CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA, Britain's leading
charity devoted to the conquest of the disease in children.
Professor Coleman, who is Professor of Epidemiology and Vital
Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine, said that between 480 and 500 children under the age
of 15 are diagnosed with leukaemia in Britain each year and
about 100 die from it. It accounts