ABSTRACT
'The development of prenatal screening in Europe: the past, the present and the future' which was funded by the European Commission from 1996–1999. This chapter reviews briefly the terms, prenatal screening and prenatal diagnosis. It describes the history of the research project and highlights key ethical issues and benefits linked to it. Prenatal screening is the programmatic search for foetal abnormalities such as congenital malformations, chromosomal disorders, neural tube defects and genetic conditions among the asymptomatic population of pregnant women. Prenatal technologies are ethically the most problematic applications of genetic. The European project aimed at identifying the main ethical, legal and social issues related to the development of prenatal screening in Europe in order to inform public policies in the fields of public health and biomedicine. In terms of scientific benefits, this project was set within the context of multidisciplinary, cross cultural, health service research. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
