Discussion: severe mental retardation and cancer among atomic bomb survivors exposed in utero.

When I was in medical school, Douglas Power Murphy, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, told us of his inexpensive, simple study of "microcephaly" and mental retardation in newborn infants whose mothers had received therapeutic radiation early in pregnancy. His review of the literature and mail inquiry of other obstetrics centers in the United States revealed 14 published cases (Murphy, '28) and 16 unpublished (Goldstein and Murphy, '29). Here am I, 52 years later, still updating his findings.