INTERNATIONAL PERCEPTIONS AND APPROVAL OF GENE-THERAPY

Gene therapy is in clinical trials in a number of countries, raising t he question of whether different ethical standards can be justified in different countries. One key issue is how divergent are the perceptio ns and bioethical reasoning of peoples around the world. An Internatio nal Bioethics Survey with 150 questions, including 35 open ones, was d eveloped to look at how people think about diseases, life, nature, and selected issues of science and technology, biotechnology, genetic eng ineering, genetic screening, and gene therapy. The mail response surve y was conducted in 1993 among the public in Australia, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, and Thailand, and the same written survey was conducted among university students in Australia, Hong Kong, India , Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand . Similar questions were included in an international high school educ ation bioethics survey among high school teachers in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. Further international comparisons to the United Stat es and Europe are made. About three-quarters of all samples supported personal use of gene therapy, with higher support for children's use o f gene therapy. The diversity of views was generally similar within ea ch country. The major reasons given were to save life and increase the quality of life. About 5-7% rejected gene therapy, considering it to be playing God, or unnatural. There was very little concern about euge nics (0.5-2%), and more respondents gave supportive reasons like ''imp roving genes,'' especially in Thailand and India. Support for specific applications was significantly less for ''improving physical characte rs,'' ''improving intelligence,'' or ''making people more ethical'' th an for curing diseases like cancer or diabetes, but there was little d ifference between inheritable or noninheritable gene therapy.