Childlessness in Blood Donors

are presented on the ABO and Rh blood groups in relation to blood donors' marital status and childlessness. In a subsequent paper data will be presented on the ABO and Rh blood groups in relation to the number, sex, and mortality of blood donors' children. As in the previous paper the data have been obtained from a questionary completed by 5785 blood donors aged 20-65 of the Aberdeen and N.E. Scotland Blood Service. (This questionary, with its accompanying letter, is reproduced as an Appendix to the previous paper.) In the present paper, however, the results are compared with those from the only similar survey hitherto reported-that of Bennett and Walker (1956), on whose questionary, completed by 2609 blood donors aged 50-65 of the Cambridge and East Anglian Blood Transfusion Service, my own was very largely modelled. By chance the East Anglian and N.E. Scotland regions thus represented are broadly alike, in being predominantly agricultural areas with no large city but with market and fishing towns. A comparison is also made, in respect of marital status, with the results from Roberts' (1942) series of blood donors from the North Welsh coastal counties of Carnarvon, Denbigh, and Flint.