Ethics and Gene Therapy from UNESCO'S Viewpoint

The spectacular advances in the mapping of the human genome has opened up encouraging prospects for the treatment of genetic disorders. This knowledge thus accumulated has also lead to significant progress achieved in gene technology. Although at the beginning the applications of the knowledge and of the technology aimed at he treatment of some 4000 monogenic diseases, at present they relate largely, as indicated throughout this symposium, to multifactoral genetic disorders or to genetic predispositions to certain diseases. Human gene therapy can be defined as the deliberate alteration of the genetic material of living cells to prevent or treat disease.