Medicine: City of Hope

As Toni frolicked in the playroom at the City of Hope, 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles, she looked like an average, happy two-year-old. Usually treated as an outpatient, she had been kept in the hospital a few days because of a cold and swelling in her lymph nodes. She was much better after a blood transfusion, and would probably be home before New Year's Day. Toni has acute leukemia, commonest of the cancers and related disorders that annually kill more U.S. children than any other group of diseases.

If she had been stricken...