Sharp differences in the attitudes of those who provide genetic services in China and other developing countries compared with those in the West are expected to be revealed in the results of an international survey due out later this year.

Data from the survey, which compares perspectives from 37 countries, was presented at the 18th International Congress on Genetics held in Beijing in August, where it was used to explain why China endorses greater intervention by health authorities on genetics-related issues than many in the West find acceptable.

Of 225 genetic service providers in China who replied to a written questionnaire, 93 percent said they agreed that individuals suspected of being a carrier of a genetic disease should be required to undergo pre-natal diagnosis before having a child. In contrast, only 10 percent of those responding to a similar questionnaire in the US felt the same way. Conversely, whereas only five percent of Chinese respondents said that a blind couple should be free to decide for themselves whether or not to give birth to a blind child, the comparable proportion in Australia was 93 percent.

The contrasting figures were discussed at the Beijing meeting by Ren-Zong Qiu, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' program in bioethics, as part of the background to a discussion on China's controversial Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care—originally known as the Eugenics Law.

According to Qiu, in order to understand the thinking behind the law—which has been widely criticized for suggesting that physicians use genetic criteria to decide whether a couple can marry and have children—it is important to accept that China has always had "a collective oriented social and political philosophy."

Qiu said the survey had revealed that, in common with their colleagues in China, most of the genetic services providers in Cuba, Mexico and Greece, felt that an important goal of genetics was to prevent the spread of genetic diseases. And as in China, respondents to questionnaires in Russia and India accepted that there could be conditions under which a family member should be given access to details of genetic screening tests on an individual without that person's consent.

But only China has adopted "the improvement of the population" as an explicit goal. Qiu acknowledged the importance of comments by outsiders on the more controversial aspects of the Chinese law; several of its key clauses, he told the congress, were being revised by the government.

The survey was co-ordinated by Dorothy Wertz of the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation in Waltham, Massachusetts. The Chinese data has been collected jointly by Wertz and Xin Mao of West China University of Medical Science in Chengdu.