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Male-mediated developmental toxicity
Reproductive Toxicology, Vol. 9, No. 5. pp. 497-498, 1995 Copyright 0 1995 Elsevier Science Inc. Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0890-6238195 $9.50 + .OO
Pergamon
l
Book Review study and guidance from our laboratory colleagues will ultimately resolve the issue.
Male-Mediated Developmental Toxicity. Olshan AF, Mattison DR. New York, NY, Plenum Press; 1994.406 pages, $115. The question of paternally mediated adverse pregnancy effects has been among the most interesting and politically loaded questions in toxicology. We live in an era in which it is fashionable to be unbiased, and biologic distinctions based on race, ethnicity, or sex are viewed with mistrust and disapproval. It has become, in the minds of some, imperative that men be as capable of women of being the mediators of developmental toxicity, if only to satisfy a sense of fairness. Men, after all, contribute half the genome of the conceptus; should they not also contribute half the risk? In the fall of 1992, a conference was organized in Pittsburgh, PA, to review the data in this field and to explore their implications. This book is the result of that meeting. The conference was eagerly anticipated by advocates of the recognition of a stronger role for men in mediating adverse outcomes; one of the organizers was Donald Mattison, newly Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and the involvement of Doctor Mattison as well as other distinguished scientists on the organizing committee was believed by some advocacy figures to lend a much-needed air of legitimacy to the field. The same people who looked to this conference to confer scientific legitimacy on their political agenda have subsequently trumpeted the findings of the conference as confirming the parity of men and women on the toxicology front. This conclusion made me nervous; I would have been surprised and dismayed to learn that a 1992 conference proved that men and women made equal contributions to manifestations of developmental toxicity, because it would have meant that I had missed some important news. I am pleased to report that in spite of the political hype surrounding the conference, the book Male-Mediated Developmental Toxicity is scientifically sound and barely political at all. The epidemiology chapters are particularly good in presenting a balanced view of the existing data. For example, the chapter on parental occupation and birth defects, lead-authored by Andrew Olshan, the book’s coeditor, presents the many published associations in an uncritical tabular form but does acknowledge the fishingexpedition nature of these reports, concluding
Johnathan Buckley, in a chapter on paternal exposure and childhood cancer, goes even farther in rejecting politics in favor of science: “My own inclination, reflecting perhaps a distrusting and skeptical nature, is to believe that the occupational associations are largely spurious.” There was a time when mistrust and skepticism were considered scientific virtues; it would be nice to think that these times are coming back. The chapter on miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight, and preterm delivery, by David Savitz, is particularly good. All the tables summarizing studies contain 95% confidence intervals as well as point estimates, an important feature that does not always appear in other chapters. Doctor Savitz is not afraid to offer personal judgments and sensible suggestions such as giving attention to tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use rather than simply accepting job titles as the most important determinant of exposure to potentially toxic compounds. In addition to the epidemiology chapters, there are nice overviews of the experimental animal data on paternally mediated effects, mostly collected within an initial section called “Laboratory Evidence.” Even within the epidemiology section, however, there is a splendid discussion by Jennifer Ratcliffe of the experimental dominant lethal assay and how it may be related to human embryonic or fetal loss. Doctor Ratcliffe has been a prominent endorser of the idea that laboratory scientists and epidemiologists ought to talk to one another; her competence and comfort in both arenas is evidenced here. Having been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the scientific presentations arising from the conference, I must say I was also distinctly annoyed by the sloppiness of the production work for this volume. There are six sections into which the 39 chapters are divided; however, the sections appear only in the Table of Contents: the first chapter of the Epidemiology section follows the last chapter of the laboratory section without so much as a blank page to set one apart from the other. There are no
The research on paternal occupation and birth defects is still in the hypothesis generating phase. There have not been an adequate number of both informative positive and negative epidemiologic studies conducted to date to be able to begin to definitively characterize the risk associated with paternal occupation. However, some leads have been provided and only further epidemiologic 497
498
Reproductive Toxicology
chapter numbers or running heads for the individual contributions, making it difficult to figure out where one is in the book without continuously flipping back to the contents. Although many books have occasional typos, the errors in this book suggest a lack of attention to page proofs, with lines amputated halfway through and pages printed out of order. The index, which is two pages long, is entirely unhelpful. It is with some reservation, then, that I recommend this book. For readers who want a readable and reasonable orientation to the field, Mule-MediatedDevelopmenta1 Toxicity is a useful source; how-
Volume 9. Number 5. 1994
ever, I am troubled about encouraging people to pay $115 to the publisher for a book that is not particularly well constructed; after all, the authors, who deserve credit for the high-quality aspects of the book, are not likely to get very much of the purchase price. The authors and editors are to be commended, however, for having adhered to the best scientific principles in presenting information in a field so susceptible to nonscientific influences. ANTHONY R. SCIALLI,MD Reproductive Toxicology Center Wasington, DC
Pergamon
l
Book Review study and guidance from our laboratory colleagues will ultimately resolve the issue.
Male-Mediated Developmental Toxicity. Olshan AF, Mattison DR. New York, NY, Plenum Press; 1994.406 pages, $115. The question of paternally mediated adverse pregnancy effects has been among the most interesting and politically loaded questions in toxicology. We live in an era in which it is fashionable to be unbiased, and biologic distinctions based on race, ethnicity, or sex are viewed with mistrust and disapproval. It has become, in the minds of some, imperative that men be as capable of women of being the mediators of developmental toxicity, if only to satisfy a sense of fairness. Men, after all, contribute half the genome of the conceptus; should they not also contribute half the risk? In the fall of 1992, a conference was organized in Pittsburgh, PA, to review the data in this field and to explore their implications. This book is the result of that meeting. The conference was eagerly anticipated by advocates of the recognition of a stronger role for men in mediating adverse outcomes; one of the organizers was Donald Mattison, newly Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and the involvement of Doctor Mattison as well as other distinguished scientists on the organizing committee was believed by some advocacy figures to lend a much-needed air of legitimacy to the field. The same people who looked to this conference to confer scientific legitimacy on their political agenda have subsequently trumpeted the findings of the conference as confirming the parity of men and women on the toxicology front. This conclusion made me nervous; I would have been surprised and dismayed to learn that a 1992 conference proved that men and women made equal contributions to manifestations of developmental toxicity, because it would have meant that I had missed some important news. I am pleased to report that in spite of the political hype surrounding the conference, the book Male-Mediated Developmental Toxicity is scientifically sound and barely political at all. The epidemiology chapters are particularly good in presenting a balanced view of the existing data. For example, the chapter on parental occupation and birth defects, lead-authored by Andrew Olshan, the book’s coeditor, presents the many published associations in an uncritical tabular form but does acknowledge the fishingexpedition nature of these reports, concluding
Johnathan Buckley, in a chapter on paternal exposure and childhood cancer, goes even farther in rejecting politics in favor of science: “My own inclination, reflecting perhaps a distrusting and skeptical nature, is to believe that the occupational associations are largely spurious.” There was a time when mistrust and skepticism were considered scientific virtues; it would be nice to think that these times are coming back. The chapter on miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight, and preterm delivery, by David Savitz, is particularly good. All the tables summarizing studies contain 95% confidence intervals as well as point estimates, an important feature that does not always appear in other chapters. Doctor Savitz is not afraid to offer personal judgments and sensible suggestions such as giving attention to tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use rather than simply accepting job titles as the most important determinant of exposure to potentially toxic compounds. In addition to the epidemiology chapters, there are nice overviews of the experimental animal data on paternally mediated effects, mostly collected within an initial section called “Laboratory Evidence.” Even within the epidemiology section, however, there is a splendid discussion by Jennifer Ratcliffe of the experimental dominant lethal assay and how it may be related to human embryonic or fetal loss. Doctor Ratcliffe has been a prominent endorser of the idea that laboratory scientists and epidemiologists ought to talk to one another; her competence and comfort in both arenas is evidenced here. Having been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the scientific presentations arising from the conference, I must say I was also distinctly annoyed by the sloppiness of the production work for this volume. There are six sections into which the 39 chapters are divided; however, the sections appear only in the Table of Contents: the first chapter of the Epidemiology section follows the last chapter of the laboratory section without so much as a blank page to set one apart from the other. There are no
The research on paternal occupation and birth defects is still in the hypothesis generating phase. There have not been an adequate number of both informative positive and negative epidemiologic studies conducted to date to be able to begin to definitively characterize the risk associated with paternal occupation. However, some leads have been provided and only further epidemiologic 497
498
Reproductive Toxicology
chapter numbers or running heads for the individual contributions, making it difficult to figure out where one is in the book without continuously flipping back to the contents. Although many books have occasional typos, the errors in this book suggest a lack of attention to page proofs, with lines amputated halfway through and pages printed out of order. The index, which is two pages long, is entirely unhelpful. It is with some reservation, then, that I recommend this book. For readers who want a readable and reasonable orientation to the field, Mule-MediatedDevelopmenta1 Toxicity is a useful source; how-
Volume 9. Number 5. 1994
ever, I am troubled about encouraging people to pay $115 to the publisher for a book that is not particularly well constructed; after all, the authors, who deserve credit for the high-quality aspects of the book, are not likely to get very much of the purchase price. The authors and editors are to be commended, however, for having adhered to the best scientific principles in presenting information in a field so susceptible to nonscientific influences. ANTHONY R. SCIALLI,MD Reproductive Toxicology Center Wasington, DC