La nouvelle loi bioéthique du 7 juillet 2011 relative au diagnostic prénatal peut-elle prévenir tout risque de dérive eugénique ?

In France, the proved consequence of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome is in most of the cases an interruption of the pregnancy. This applies to 96% of the foetuses detected to carry this chromosomal pathology. Its screening, established in 1997, is even reinforced by a ministerial court order from 2009 which praises a better efficiency and a bigger precocity through the combined test during the first trimester. Therefore the question of a politic of eradication, which borders on eugenics, has been recurrent during the last few years. It has its corollary: which is the role of the obstetrician? These essential questions have not been suppressed during the discussions for the revision of the bioethics' law and they have even raised a polemic. The legislator has finally voted for the obligation of information concerning all the pregnant women associated to dispositions which are supposed to exclude eugenic degeneration. Is this debate closed? Considering our clinical practice we propose a critical lecture of the law of 7th July 2011 concerning prenatal diagnosis by emphasizing its positive as well as its litigious and even underestimated aspects in relation to the advances of science.