The universal right to health is well established, but between declarations of principles and reality there are gaps difficult to transpose. Unequal scientific-technological developments have enlarged the distances between standards of living, and therefore of the health conditions, of 1st and 3rd World populations. One of the most important areas of this scientific-technological development is that related to genetics and molecular biology. The spectacular advances in this area are conditioning that human life is becoming more and more "geneticized". The present review considered the relations between these areas and that of public health with reference to (a) infectious diseases; (b) mendelian illnesses; (c) chromosome aberrations; (d) multifactorial conditions; (e) mutagenesis, teratogenesis, carcinogenesis; (f) hemoglobinopathies and thalassemias. The future of Brazil's public health is far from promising, but an effort should be made for the establishment of programs in this sector that would involve appropriate inversions both in infrastructure and the formation of human resources; and such programs cannot afford the luxury of ignoring genetics and molecular biology.
Right to health; Socioeconomic inequalities and health; Parasite-host interactions; Inherited diseases; Cancer; hemoglobinopathies and thalassemias
