Ethical aspects of gene therapy and molecular genetic diagnostics.

Progress in medicine has solved many problems facing humanity. At the same time, however, it has also led to many new ones. There is no reason to believe that this ambivalence will cease to exist with respect to future applications of gene technology in medicine. A sober and differential assessment of the chances and risks of this new technology is therefore necessary. The present paper outlines just such an assessment. Its main conclusion is that genetic diagnostics may pose more difficult ethical and social problems than gene therapy. This may especially be the case if this diagnostic technology is routinely used for screening programs to detect widespread diseases like cancer, hypertension or diabetes in a population that is not at high risk.