Press Releases

This year the German Ethics Council celebrates its tenth anniversary. To mark this occasion, the Council’s members are invited this evening to an official reception hosted by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Over the following two days, the Council will hold its annual meeting, dedicated this year to the topic of “Human Dignity in Our Hands – Challenges from New Technologies.” The opening addresses will be delivered by President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble, and the renowned Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.

Legal expert Volker Lipp has been elected as Vice-Chair during today’s plenary meeting.

In Germany alone there are about four million people living with a rare disease – reason enough for the German Ethics Council to meet 25 April with over 200 guests to focus on the situation of the patients and their families, and discuss how their needs could be better catered for by the health care system.

On Wednesday, 21 February, around 30 members of the German Parliament (Bundestag) accepted an invitation to join the German Ethics Council at its eighth Parliamentary Evening in Berlin. Among those present were Annette Widmann-Mauz (CDU/CSU), Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health, as well as Ernst Dieter Rossmann (SPD), Chair of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment.

In an Opinion published today entitled "Big Data and Health – Data Sovereignty as the Shaping of Informational Freedom", the German Ethics Council proposes responsible ways of handling informational freedom when dealing with health-related data, taking into account big data’s opportunities and risks.

"Gene drive – Turbo inheritance in medicine and agriculture" – this was the title of the public autumn conference held by the German Ethics Council in Frankfurt am Main on 26 October 2017.