Bioethics in human gene analysis and international view

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Objective :The law for protection of personal information was enforced on April 1, 2005. Collection and analysis of genetic information should be carried out according to this law. Genetic information is definitely "personal" and researches with genetic information should be carefully planned and performed. We asked several medical and research institutions for rules and regulations related to this new law. For international comparison, information concerning bioethics in China was collected. Experimental work also was carried out using biotechnology for gene analysis in humanResults and discussion :The new law was carefully and extensively discussed in all institutes surveyed. Institutional ethics committees decided to follow the law and regulation for anonymity was strictly enforced in all institutions surveyed. Institutions receiving human materials not directly from human subjects are particularly careful to receive anonymized materials only. Computers analyzing genetic data are not connected to telephone lines. Such off-line handling of genetic data has been taken care of in all institutions surveyed. In China, several books on genetic counseling have been published. This is very impressive as bioethics was essentially non-existing in China until about 10 years ago. In our new graduate course for genetic counseling at Kinki University, we established a bioethics committee, in accordance with the personal information protection law. Such consideration was also applied for the survey of atomic bomb survivors.