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Science 21 August 1998:
Vol. 281. no. 5380, pp. 1118 - 1119
DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5380.1118
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News of the Week

MEDICAL ETHICS:
Geneticists Debate Eugenics and China's Infant Health Law

Dennis Normile

BEIJING--A freewheeling discussion last week at an international genetics meeting here may have cleared the air on a controversial Chinese law to reduce infant mortality. The 1994 law was aimed at improving pre- and post-natal health care. But it provoked a fierce outcry among some Western scientists when it appeared to forbid individuals with "certain genetic diseases" from marrying unless they agreed to be sterilized or take long-term contraceptive measures, and to encourage abortions for fetuses with abnormalities. A boycott of the meeting by the British, Dutch, and Argentine genetics societies had little effect on attendance, however, and there was a consensus that the law is less severe than feared and that, so far, it has not been enforced.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
The Old Eugenics and the New Genetics Compared.
M. Ekberg (2007)
Soc Hist Med 20, 581-593
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