Press Releases

Is it acceptable for children who are born intersexed to be given genital corrective surgery? Many intersex persons who are now adults express regret for the consequences of such operations, which are traumatic for them and are usually irreversible, and call for them to be banned. During the public hearing of the German Ethics Council on 8 June 2011 in Berlin, ethical, medical, legal, psychological and social questions in connection with intersexuality were the subject of a lively and heated discussion.

The Ethics Council invited prominent speakers, for example Vandana Shiva, winner of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize, Hans Rudolf Herren, President of the Millennium Institute in Arlington and Thomas Pogge, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, to discuss the topic of feeding the world population and the associated ethical challenges.

On Thursday (yesterday), the German Ethics Council and TMF – Technologie- und Methodenplattform für die vernetzte medizinische Forschung e. V. (an organization dedicated to networked medical research and the associated technology and methods), invited a number of experts to Berlin for a meeting to discuss the Opinion and recommendations of the Ethics Council for placing research with human biobanks on a statutory foundation.

On Wednesday 23 March, the German Ethics Council held its second Parliamentary Evening in Berlin.

In this Opinion, the Ethics Council comprehensively sets out the relevant factual position and the decisive arguments of supporters and opponents of permitting preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

One year after publishing its Opinion on the anonymous relinquishment of infants, the German Ethics Council has held a discussion with representatives from practice, the media and politics on what developments have occurred since then.