The average medical student now receives something like 15 hours formal tuition in our specialty. Practices appear to vary widely from medical school to medical school as to what format that teaching takes, as to the nature and background of personnel offering teaching in medical genetics, not to mention the means by which students are examined. In parallel with this fairly haphazard approach to teaching what is clearly considered to be a very minor subject of the medical school curriculum, the textbooks targeted at medical students have mushroomed. Not only has there been a proliferation of new authors entering this field but, as established observers will be aware, the size of the volumes offered expands with each passing edition. There is a theory in medical education that each lecturer thinks that students need to know about 80% of the knowledge the lecturer …