Fosterdiagnostikk - Hva kan vi finne ut om fosteret og hvilke etiske problemstillinger skaper dette

Abstract

Background: The debate concerning prenatal diagnostics have been going on in Norwegian politics for years, but with the proposition of introducing a new diagnostic method called NIPT the debate was reinforced in 2017. This debate is both ethical and political and regards the advantages and disadvantages of NIPT as a test, but also more fundamental questions about what kind of society we want for people with disabilities and how we are going to regulate new developments in the field of biotechnology. Method: In this paper I have made an overview over the arguments used in the national debate concerning prenatal diagnostics. I have used articles found in the Norwegian newspapers during one year from January 2017 to January 2018. The search was made in the database ATEKST with relevant search words. I excluded articles that were not relevant to the debate or that were copies of earlier articles, this left 149 relevant articles. The arguments found in the articles were sorted in subgroups with similar arguments. The different subgroups were later sorted into main groups. Results: I identified 485 arguments regarding prenatal diagnostics in the articles. Of them 311 were against a more liberal use of prenatal diagnostics, 167 argued for a more liberal use and 7 could be interpreted both for and against a more liberal use. The arguments were sorted in 6 main groups and 24 subgroups. Discussion: The potential reasons for getting a bias in the results are discussed in this part of the paper. I also made an overview of the most important themes of the debate and what the disagreements concerns.