The Scope of the Recent Bioethics Debate in Germany: Kant, Crisis, and No Confidence in Society

Extract

The past five years have brought important and rapid developments for the scientific bioethics community in Germany. Bioethics was institutionalized as an obligatory part of the undergraduate and graduate schedule in medical schools. Clinical ethics committees are spreading all over the country, and research on ethical issues of biomedicine is sponsored on a large scale, for example, by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Two main institutions, dealing with bioethics and biopolicies, were established and have worked on central bioethical issues, mostly ending up with diametrically opposed recommendations: the Enquetekommission Recht und Ethik der Modernen Medizin (Parliamentary Commission on Law and Ethics of Modern Medicine), composed of parliamentarians of all political parties and appointed external experts, and the National Ethics Council, composed of experts, politicians, several stakeholders, and representatives of the Catholic and Protestant churches.