ABSTRACT
With the development of reproductive genetics, new genetic technologies are used increasingly in the field of prenatal care. This chapter discusses findings from a study on European experts' views on prenatal screening and diagnosis. It provides a review of the study's methodology, reports on findings from all four countries, and offers a discussion of these findings and some conclusions. The source of empirical data is a qualitative study on experts' accounts of the use of pre-natal genetic screening in four European countries: Greece, The Netherlands, England, and Finland. For the experts' study, the initial number for interviews was set at ten in each country and the goal was to interview equal numbers of geneticists, clinicians, practitioners, lawyers and/or ethicists, policy makers, public health officials and researchers in each country. The findings revealed that the various country themes, claimed by the experts appeared to revolve around main over-arching cultural issues such as thalassaemia, abortion, ethics and care for pregnant women.
