Response by the authors:

It would be hard to imagine receiving comments that are more relevant nor receiving them from individuals so eminently qualified to make them. It would also be less than honest not to mention that both authors were students of Dr Hay during their education at Harvard.

Our paper in question dealt with the distribution of the most common of all craniofacial anomalies, dento-alveolar clefts. The pathogenesis of these often-disfiguring conditions has not been explored to any detail in our manuscript. We humbly acknowledge that many authors, including Drs Hay and Lavin, are substantially better qualified to write on the subject than we are. Indeed, we would hope that for the further erudication of the journal's readers on the subject, Drs Hay and Larvin take to their pens and write a manuscript in which they would explore the current concepts of palatogenesis. They could elaborate on both discredited or rejected hypotheses and present results of the latest research they and other workers in the field have recently concluded. On our part, we have committed to detailed studies of several aspects of skeletodental anomalies, taking advantage of an unusually well documented and a reasonably large sample of clefts. We will continue reporting our findings in our hope to clarify some controversies and inconsistencies found in the previous reports.

Again, we appreciate and value comments offered by Drs Lavin and Hay.