Commentary: Study of the Neurobehavioral Consequences of Childhood Cancer: Entering the Genomic Era?

The outlook for children diagnosed with cancer has sig- nificantly improved and continued to change since the late 1960s. Due to advances in therapy and diagnosis, the focus of psychological research and service has progres- sively changed from death and dying to surviving and cure, as well as possible neurobehavioral late effects, which is addressed in the accompanying papers (Moore; Butler & Mulhern, this issue). The first papers addressing neurobehavioral issues of survivors of pediatric cancer focused on childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and reported quite contrasting results. In the first study, Soni, Marten, Pitner, Duenas, and Powazek (1975) found that survi- vors of childhood ALL who had received central nervous system (CNS) preventative treatment, including 2400 cGy of cranial radiation therapy (CRT), did not have cognitive/intellectual deficits compared with a matched