Heinemann studied Medicine and Philosophy. He has been working several years as medical doctor at the University Hospital Bonn and conducted basic research in laboratories in New York and Bonn. After that he became interested in medical ethics and was more than ten years a member of the Institute of Science and Ethics of the University Bonn. In 2011 Heinemann became professor for Ethics, Theory and History of Medicine at the Philosophical-Theological University in Vallendar (since 2021: Vinzenz Pallotti University). Based on his medical, scientific and philosophical education, he has been dealing for many years with the question of status and protection of human embryos and artificial embryonic entities.

He chairs several senior hospital ethics committees, was from 2012 – 2016 member of the German Ethics Council, and is since 2012 a member of the German delegation within the Steering Committee for Human Rights in the fields of Biomedicine and Health (CDBIO) of the Council of Europe.

Further information: Vinzenz Pallotti University/Thomas Heinemann