Because diseases of the bone are often less acute and less lifethreatening than dis eases of the circulatory system, gastrointestinal tract, kidney, liver, and the nervous system, they have received a disproportionately smaller amount of attention in the medical world. With the average increasing life span of man as a result of improve ments in modern medicine, espe ially in the pediatric field, the seriousness of many metabolic bone diseases has indeed become more obvious. In addition, other improvements in medicine, such as hemodialysis for the preservation of renal failure patients, have...