It is not yet clear whether some polymorphic variants of the Ha-ras-1 gene confer genetic predisposition to cancer. However, recent data on myelodysplasia and lung cancer are controversial. To clarify this point, 62 colorectal adenocarcinoma patients were examined for the Ha-ras-1 gene restriction fragment length polymorphism and results were compared with those of 108 healthy blood donors. No Ha-ras-1 polymorphic variants specifically associated with the cancer patients were detected. However, a specific genotype was significantly more frequent in the healthy donors than in the cancer patients (16% versus 5%), suggesting an interaction between the two alleles of the gene.