Press Releases

The German Ethics Council held its first Parliamentary Evening in Berlin yesterday (Wednesday)

The combination of human and animal genes, cells and tissues in the laboratory raises ethical concerns about the significance and possible blurring of the boundary between humans and animals, a topic on which the German Ethics Council is currently drawing up an Opinion. This was the context of a public hearing held by the Council on 25 February 2010 to which experts from the United States, the United Kingdom and Austria were invited.

Shall we soon be creating “life-forms from a self-assembly kit”, and if so how might our image of humanity be changed? This question was addressed by the German Ethics Council on 24 February 2010 at a public evening meeting in the Bioethics Forum series.

At the invitation of the German Ethics Council (DER), representatives of the ethics councils of France, Germany and the United Kingdom came together for a trilateral meeting in Berlin last Thursday.

The Chair of the German Ethics Council (DER), Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig, today (Tuesday) stressed that, contrary to the accusation voiced by some critics, the Ethics Council on no account placed less value on a child’s life than on a child’s right to a knowledge of his or her origins.

The German Ethics Council has issued its first Opinion, entitled Anonymous Relinquishment of Infants: Tackling the Problem.