Prospect of Medical Genetics in China From a Historical Point of View

The history of medical genetics is briefly reviewed. It is evident that medical genetics with its inseparable part, clinical genetics, started out as a clinical science from the very beginning. Its robust development in the developed countries is the result of a close interaction between the basic sciences and clinical genetics. In China, however, clinical genetics has not received due emphasis and medical genetics is still not recognized as one of the medical specialties. This is in marked contrast to the situation in the West It is high time to acknowledge that medical genetics is a medical specialty and to promote clinical genetics service in qualified hospitals in our country.