E. Tanner – Författare

In the preface to Volume 1 of the 'Annals of Life Insurance Medicine' Dr. MAX E. EISENRING described the goal of this publication as follows: "Any project which aims at contributing substantially to the modern science of medical underwriting can do so only if the many people preoccupied with these problems throughout the world join forces to the ultimate benefit of those most in need of life assurance." In an endeavour to keep the life insurance medical directors all over the world informed of the developments in the field of life insurance medicine, we have decided to publish the papers which were presented at the 11 th International Congress of Life Assurance Medicine in Mexico in 1973 in Volume 5 of the 'Annals'. We are most grateful to Dr. J. REN06N, President of the Organizing Commit­ tee of the Congress in Mexico for having consented to our publishing the proceed­ ings of the Congress in a special edition of the 'Annals'. It is a source of great satisfaction to us that in this way a much larger circle of life insurance medical directors can be reached than would have been the case if only the participants themselves were to receive the proceedings of the Congress. Dissemination of the results of medical research on an international basis, in particular those findings that have a bearing on life insurance medicine, is one of our foremost aims.

Today, the integration of life insurance medicine into the framework of general medicine goes without saying. On the one hand, the diagnostic therapeutic knowledge of clinical medical science forms the tools of the insurance medical adviser for the evaluation of life insurance applications. On the other hand, life insurance medicine has been able to pro­ vide valuable statistical data for long-term prognosis which have become an essential part of the daily medical practice and prognostic appraisal. This mutual engagement and en­ richment has again distinctly manifested itself in the scientific program of the 13th Con­ gress of Life Assurance Medicine held in Madrid. Among the broad and varied data available, the insurance problem of cancer and ma­ lignant diseases of the haematopoietic system were extensively dealt with for the first time. Diagnostic therapeutic progress increasingly allows valuable insurance cover to be granted to formerly uninsurable risks, a group which is particularly in need of, and re­ quires, life insurance cover. The number of risks which are uninsurable becomes smaller and smaller.