History of the International Society for Neonatal Screening.

Professor Naruse has outlined (see article in this issue) the events that were the forerunners to the formation of the International Society for Neonatal Screening (ISNS). The first three meetings on newborn screening in Dubrovnik, Tel-Aviv (Cohen ef al, 1971) and Warsaw, were closed meetings for selected participants, and little information was generally available after the meetings. The next three were truly international meetings. After the meetings in Heidelberg (Bickel ef al, 1980) and Tokyo (Namse and Irie, 1983), the 6Lh International Newborn Screening meeting was held in Austin, Texas (November 1619, 1986) (Therrell, 1987), and there were over 300 participants representing 27 countries. At the session on Quality Control, it was recommended that an international symposium dealing only with issues of quality assurance in newb~rn screening should be held. The following year, May 23-26, 1987, Professor Naruse organized an international workshop on "Quality Control in Neonatal Screening" in Tokyo and Nikko, Japan (Lake Chuzenji). Approximately 20 persons attended this meeting [see photo (Fig I)]. During an open discussion among participants on future activities in newborn screening, Dr Ian Lyon (New Zealand) proposed creating an intemational society. As explained in Professor Naruse's report (this issue), the discussion in Nikko was the culmination of much previous discussion among some of the leaders in the newborn screening field about creating an international organization. Professor Naruse agreed to serve as President with Dr Brad Therrell (USA) to serve as Secretary. It was also decided that Dr Robert Guthrie (USA) and Dr Horst Bickel (FRG) would be named as first Honorary Members (Patrons) of the Society. Details of organizing the Society fell to the two officers and dissemination of relevant