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The intent of this book is to illuminate under the critical light of epidemiology the existing and evolving knowledge of prenatal development through all of gestation from conception to birth. The book is divided into 5 sections: 1) disorders of development: weighing the evidence for environmental causes 2) conception and early gestation 3) later gestation 4) age and parity and 5) the physical environment reproduction and surveillance. The 1st section guides readers in evaluating observed associations between suspected teratogens and developmental outcomes. The authors discuss a number of established criteria by which the quality of causal inferences might be judged--time order strength consistency specificity and coherence. After laying this groundwork the 2nd and 3rd sections draw an epidemiological map of development. The 2nd section devotes 3 consecutive chapters to the probabilities of conception and of loss to the interpretation of frequency measures and to actual frequencies observed. Another 3 chapters are devoted to miscarriage data in which normal and aberrant karyotypes have been differentiated. The 3rd section turns to fetal growth and its duration preterm delivery and existing concepts of fetal growth and birth weight. Section 4 explores 2 major issues in the analysis of reproductive outcomes maternal age and gravidity. Section 5 takes up the public health challenge of detecting and controlling environmental hazards to reproduction including a systematic analytic treatment of surveillance and the rationale for undertaking surveillance.