Press Releases

On Wednesday, 26 June 2019, the annual meeting of the German Ethics Council will take place in Berlin, more than 600 participants are expected. The conference can also be followed via video livestream.

Yesterday (Thursday), the German Ethics Council held its ninth Parliamentary Evening in Berlin. At the beginning of this event, the Chair of the Council, Peter Dabrock, handed over the Annual Report 2018 to the President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Last year, the birth of the first genetically modified babies shook the world. The German Ethics Council now presents a comprehensive ethical investigation into possible interventions in the genome of human embryos or germ cells. The Council does not deem the human germline to be inviolable. It does, however, consider germline interventions to be ethically irresponsible at the present time because of the associated incalculable risks. The Council, therefore, calls for an application moratorium and recommends that the Federal Government and the Bundestag work towards a binding international agreement.

The German Ethics Council welcomes efforts to increase vaccination rates. However, in view of the current debate on mandatory measles vaccination, it criticises the illegitimate narrowing of the discussion to children, the insufficient consideration of the available data, and the vagueness of the concept of mandatory vaccination. It therefore advocates a comprehensive approach.

At a public hearing in Berlin on 21 February 2019, the German Ethics Council discussed with experts from the fields of virology, epidemiology and political science which regulatory measures for the improvement of vaccination rates are ethically and legally acceptable or reasonable. The results of this hearing will be incorporated into the Opinion “Vaccination as a duty?” that the Ethics Council is currently preparing.

On 28 November 2018, an orientation debate took place in the German Bundestag on whether an opt-out system should be established in future instead of the current opt-in system to improve the desolate situation in organ donation. Decreasing donor numbers and long waiting lists give rise to calls for fundamentally different approaches. But what are the ethical challenges raised by the possible new regulations for patients, relatives, medical staff and future donors? On Wednesday, 12 December, the German Ethics Council discussed the advantages and disadvantages of opt-out organ donation at a public evening event that was attended also by several members of the Bundestag.