Research on Embryos and Human Dignity (original) (raw)

The legal framework in effect in Germany since 1991, bars all research on human embryos and permits, since 2002, the import of embryonic stem cells only under the fulfillment of relatively demanding conditions. Legislation linked this position to the goal of ensuring freedom of biomedical research (only) to the extent that it could be justified in view of the state's obligation to protect human dignity and the right to life. Underlying this was the assumption, understood by the draft of the law that embryonic stem cells, given the destruction of embryos, which necessarily precedes their utilization, “cannot be viewed just like any other biological material from an ethical perspective.” In the meantime, however, the legal-political, would-be “enlightened”; Zeitgeist has become oriented toward a hidden or openly displayed “liberalization” of human embryonic stem cell research, which raises the question of what could have fundamentally changed about the previously named “ethical pr...