Vital needs, human rights, health care law.

Ethics and law are actually dependent and closely interacting, but also in some measure autonomous disciplines. Their balanced interaction is important for the attainment of a common aim and purpose: a good and just society. We now tend to agree that some but not all human rights should be supported by legislation.

Genetics in democratic societies--the Nordic perspective.

This report, with its emphasis on consensus points in the deliberations of the First Bioethics Workshop under the auspices of the Nordic Genome Initiative (an activity under the Nordic Council through its Nordic Programme Committee for Biotechnology), presents a Nordic perspective on the international discussion of ethical and legal issues relating to genetic testing. The Nordic countries have important common denominators with respect to political structure, education, religion, languages, cultural traditions and attitudes towards human values. A comprehensive national health service exists in all Nordic countries and there are important common legal foundations with great similarities between countries.

Ethics, genetics and science policy.

Ethical issues raised by recent rapid advances in genetics are being discussed in many settings. A version of this paper was read by its author, a Norwegian moral philosopher, at a recent symposium celebrating 90 years of the Nobel prize.