Medical genetics blossomed in Western Europe and North America in the years after the second world war. The momentum of this development has remained strong and is felt in every branch of medicine. In China, Russian influence held sway in the early days after the liberation. In genetics, the so-called Michurin-Lysenko school dominated the field and classical Mendelian genetics was criticised as capitalistic and idealistic. The break with the Russians in the mid 1950s brought new vitality to the MendelMorgan school. Medical genetics from the western world thus gained a foothold in China. In 1962, the first cytogenetics group in China was started by Wu Min in the pathology department of the former Institute of Experimental Medicine in Beijing. In 1963, the first medical genetics division, headed by the author, was set up in the Department of Medicine of the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) Hospital by Professor Zhang Shiao-quian, then head of the department. Work in this field also began in Shanghai in the Department of Biology of the Fudan University and the Department of Pediatrics of the Sixth People's Hospital in Shanghai. Unfortunately, the political turmoil in the mid 1960s interrupted scientific activities throughout the country. It was not until the end of this disaster that medical genetics regained its ground. It has since developed rapidly, especially after the founding of the Chinese Genetics Society and its Human and Medical Genetics Section in 1978 and 1979 respectively. In what follows, a concise description will be given of the historical development and the present state of affairs of several of the subspecialties of medical genetics in this country.

https://jmg.bmj.com/content/jmedgenet/25/4/253.full.pdf

Antenatal gene diagnosis of phenylketonuria

Citations

Medical genetics in China.

References

Medical genetics in China.

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