Bettina Schöne-Seifert is full professor for Medical Ethic in Munster, was a longstanding member of the German Ethic Council and engages herself as member of the Academy of Science Leopoldina in the working group “Embryo protection in Germany”.
Professor Bettina Schöne-Seifert
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Schöne-Seifert studied Medicine, Philosophy and Medical Ethics. She was working several years as medical doctor at a children’s hospital and started to focus more and more on medical ethics. She became professor in 2003 for medical ethics at the University of Munster. Her research interests include ethical problems of modern medicine, within e.g. reproduction medicine and stem cell research.
She was, amongst others, 1986 a founding member of the academic society for medical ethics in German speaking countries and from 2001 – 2010 a member of the German Ethics Council. Currently she is member of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of UNESCO and was chosen in September 2022 to join the newly-established Zukunftsrat (Future Council) of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Further information: https://www.medizin.uni-muenster.de/egtm/institut/team/prof-bettina-schoene-seifert/
Reasons for Reconsidering the Ethics of Embryo Research in German Biopolitics
Germany's strict legal ban on research on human embryos is mostly based on the ethical view that even early human embryos must for their own sake be protected from any handling that primarily serves third party interest. This view can (1.) be challenged by sound ethical arguments; is (2.) by no means universally shared in international biopolitics; leads (3.) to a research ban with increasingly high moral costs; and is (4.) by no means universally shared in Germany either. Against this background, German biopolitics should consider a differentiated re-evaluation of embryo research, which takes into account the existing (and foreseeably irreducible) pluralism of moral beliefs in this specific context.
One (5th) reason for such a new reflection – which will be of particular interest to us on the 2nd day of this conference – is provided by the rapidly advancing innovative opportunities of science to produce partial biological approximations of early embryos (so-called embryo models) without egg and sperm cells and to use them for research. Currently, there is an international discussion in bioethics about how to deal with such entities if they become more and more embryo-like in the future.
(Translation from German)
