Mutation and the Rhesus Reaction

Abstract

RECENT announcements by Race, Taylor^1,2 and their collaborators in these columns, and by Wiener and Landsteiner³, elsewhere, are of peculiar interest in connexion with some genetic implications of Levine's interpretation of erythroblastosis. Levine's hypothesis postulates a form of adverse selection restricted to heterozygous offspring of a particular class of matings and not usually affecting first-born. Selection intensity therefore depends both on the frequency of the gene rh and on the size of the family. During the summer I made an examination of the theoretical consequences of these assumptions. The results, submitted for publication in full elsewhere, led to two conclusions: (a) the likelihood that Rh(+) is the manifestation of several dominant alleles of a multiple allele series in conformity with experimental data since then established ; (b) the possibility that all such alleles are not equally efficacious with reference to the determination of hæmoiytic anæmias of the newborn or stillbirths and miscarriages associated therewith.