Over 450 people from all walks of life attended the Ethics Council's first annual conference, titled "Are human beings controllable? Insights into the brain and ways of modifying its function", held in Berlin on 28 May 2009.
At its public plenary meeting on 23 April the German Ethics Council discussed the ethical issues raised by new developments in the field of synthetic biology.
The legal and ethical aspects of preventive medicine were the subject of the second public evening meeting of the German Ethics Council in the "Bioethics Forum" series, which was held in Berlin on 25 February.