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By 1955, the MRC had received scientific reports demonstrating that civilians in Japan who had received nonfatal doses of radiation from nuclear explosions, hospital patients who had been given courses of radiotherapy, and communities living in areas with high concentrations of radon gas, were all found to show rates of leukaemia incidence in excess of that in the wider population. At a time when nuclear weapons were being routinely tested above ground and new nuclear energy-generating facilities were being developed, there were good grounds to fear that elevated radiation levels might precipitate a leukaemia epidemic.

This chapter will explain how these three developments brought the attention of the medical profession onto childhood leukaemia. The Rise of Childhood Leukaemia 35 Cancer Registration Whenever a dramatic increase in incidence occurs, one has to ask whether the change reflects actual patterns of disease or changing patterns in diagnosis. With infectious diseases, variation over time is expected, as waves of contagion move through populations more or less immune. Illnesses brought on by exposure to toxins might also show comparatively sudden surges or dips in line with the rates of exposure within the population.

In the USA, training programmes in paediatrics had been established at most medical schools by the end of the 1920s. The influence of 18 The Changing Faces of Childhood Cancer paediatricians on the funding priorities of medical schools, as well as on state and federal health policy, increased over the following decade. The American Academy of Pediatrics was founded in 1930, followed a year later by the Society for Pediatric Research for academics studying childhood diseases outside clinical practice.