[Medicine facing the challenge of genetics: from singular workshop to public health].

Medical genetics has established itself as a new field of medicine over the past 20 years. With its new techniques for artificial fertilisation, prenatal diagnosis and predictive medicine, it allows to control the quality of our children, raises the idealistic possibility of the perfect child, and already offers to predict the destiny of each of us. Going beyond the level of the individual in medicine, it implicates at the same time couples, families and indeed entire populations. It therefore provokes questions about the nature of man, his dignity and moral values. At this crucial point, it must have guides to prevent it becoming distanced from its essential vocation which is the medical treatment of human beings.