Views of Chinese medical geneticists: How they differ from 35 other nations

In a questionnaire survey of 2901 medical geneticists around the world, Chinese geneticists differed significantly from all other countries in regard to 1) amount of pessimistic counselling after prenatal diagnosis, 2) unwillingness to support patient decisions with which they disagreed, 3) belief that knowingly giving birth to a child with a genetic condition (if the birth could have been avoided) was unfair to society, 4) belief that carriers of autosomal recessive disorders should not mate with each other, 5) beliefs that governments should be actively involved in preventing the births of children with genetic handicaps by requiring carrier testing before marriage, and sterilization of 'unfit parents' if necessary. Chinese geneticists believed that reducing the number of harmful genes in the entire population was an important goal of genetics. They also believed, as did geneticists in most nations outside North America and Western Europe, that a patient's spouse and relatives had an automatic right to genetic information about the patient, even without the patient's consent. Geneticists in China and other nations need to discuss these results and learn from each other in order to reach the most ethical approaches. China's differences from other Asian nations in the survey deserve particular scrutiny.