[Professional and ethical challenges in reproductive biology and genetics at the beginning of the ne millennium].

About 15 to 20 percent of couples are infertile. Developments in reproductive biology have enabled treatment of these couples by means of assisted reproduction. In a broader sense, assisted reproductive technologies involve all methods aiming to restore impaired reproductive function. Preimplantation genetic testing, a new form of prenatal diagnosis, is a result of convergency in the development of assisted reproduction and genetics, and allows couples at risk of transferring hereditary diseases to their offspring to diagnose such abnormalities as early as immediately before or after conception. This article describes technologies of assisted reproduction and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and discusses ethical as well as legal issues in reproductive medicine.