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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Regulating dangerous futures: the German Embryo Protection Act of 1990--legislation in risk society.

This article summarises the outcome of a research project which analyses the legislative debate about the German Embryonenschutzgesetz (Embryo Protection Act) in 1990. From 1988 to 1990 the German Parliament discussed legislation for the practice of assisted contraception and embryo research. The term 'risk' is central to the discourse. For Ulrich Beck (1986) this emphasis on risk is a sign of the reflexivity which contemporary western societies have reached. This article reads back into the risk discourse the values hidden in risk terminology: they are identified as fears about modernisation processes. The focus on risk in this article allows observation of late modernity's unease about its own potential and a growing ambiguity about modern ideas of progress and control (Bauman, 1991). This ambiguity also becomes apparent in the strategies of policing which the German legislature offers as solutions to the perceived risks: different legislative strategies are developed to tackle the contradictory risk scenarios. These different strategies of policing are understood as the construction of 'places of safety' in the face of identified dangers: the 'traditional family', the 'good doctor', 'professional' judgement. Defining those boundaries allows the German legislature to juggle contradictory agendas. This explains the inconsistent and fragmented nature of the Embryo Protection Act 1990.

Criminal Law↗
PubMed1992

Fetus in Germany: the Fetus Protection Law of 12.13.1990.

The "Fetus Protection Law" (Embryonenschutzgesetz ESchG) regulates the abusive use of reproductive techniques, the use of human embryos and the choice of sex. The Bundestag has singled out certain practices as being abusive, prohibited them and put criminal sanctions on them. Individual exemptions from criminal prosecution are made in favour of the surrogate mother who is to be the target of an assisted procreation and the foster-father. The ESchG represents a snapshot of current views on current practices in reproductive medicine. And therefore the ESchG will be rendered obsolete by newly created reproductive technologies if legislation does not adapt the law to these changes.

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMed1992

The legal status of the embryo in comparative perspective.

Almost all decisions with regard to allowing or forbidding research with and on the embryo as well as any other diagnostic invasion into the embryo depend on what kind and range of protection human life in this early stage of its development is or should be entitled to. This question is commonly referred to as that of the 'moral status' of the embryo or-with special regard to legal provisions and sanctions-as its 'legal status'. The answer to this fundamental question, however, is much debated and highly controversial, both nationally and internationally. Therefore professional and legal regulations range from the rather permissive (as in the new English Human Fertilization and Embryology Act of 1990) on the one hand to the total prohibition of embryo research or certain reproductive procedures on the other (as has recently been enacted by the German Embryo Protection Act of 1990). Thus, trying to reach consensus with regard to an embryo's legal/ethical right to protection is made all the more difficult because such an opinion is often, consciously or unconsciously, prejudiced by the desire to give researchers either more or less freedom of action, depending on one's point of view: Those who wish to see diagnostic or other experimental procedures with embryos facilitated, are inclined to deny their human quality from the very start. They base their arguments on the lack of individual personality in the preinidation phase of development, or simply on the fact that in many countries abortion is not illegal at that stage. Those who, on the contrary, find abortion as well as embryo research indefensible, believe their position well-founded by assuming that the embryo, from the time of fertilization, has the individuality and personality of a human being and thus is entitled to its own basic legal rights. Since to me neither of these extreme positions seems to be particularly cogent, I will try in this article to show the reasons for and consequences of adopting a middle course which neither leaves the embryo at free disposition nor bars any kind of diagnostic or other scientific invasion.

Abortion, Legal↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Patent protection for stem cell procedures under the law of the European Union.

Stem cell research shows an immense diagnostic and therapeutic potential. The procedures based on human stem cells seem to allow new medical treatments for serious diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease, leukaemia or diabetes. However, as no company or inventor would take the risk of immense investments without an adequate legal protection of the possible benefits arising out of their work, intellectual property law plays a pivotal role for the further development of stem cell techniques. Although international patent law knows protection of inventions using biological substances and living matter for about 160 years, patents on stem cells, DNA and other parts of the human body raise specific objections. Nevertheless, from a strictly legal angle, there are no barriers to patents on stem cell procedures. In particular, Art. 6 of the "Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union of July 6, 1998 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions" - which qualifies inventions as unpatentable where their commercial exploitation would be contrary to ordre public or morality - does not hinder patent protection for stem cell research.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

On the German debate on human embryonic stem cell research.

Germany since 1990 has one of the strictest human embryo protection laws, yet according to the Stem Cell Act of 2002 allows, under strict conditions, the import and use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) for high priority research goals. The author tries to show how this is taken to be coherent by the parliamentary majority (though not necessarily by the general public) in Germany. In doing so, he firstly looks into the chronicle of the debate in Germany showing its different stages since 1999, then dwells upon the relation between the law and the role of ethics in this issue, and thirdly presents the two fundamentally different positions of the German debate, that is, that the human embryo created for IVF purposes is a human being and stands from its very beginnings under the constitutional principles of respect for, and protection of, human life versus the position that before being implanted the human embryo may become a human being and therefore belongs to the human species only potentially, so that its right to life protection may be assessable over against other high priority goals, such as research aiming at possible help for patients with life-endangering diseases. In spite of the Stem Cell Act of 2002, the debate of the German general public goes on, especially due to the recent EU 6th Research Framework Program which plans to also fund hESC research.

Bioethics↗