Human cloning action stalled

‘Human dignity is inviolable. To respect and protect is the duty of all state authority.’ Thus begins the first article of the German constitution, the ‘Grundgesetz’. Many of the political debates of the last decades, from abortion to euthanasia, have been concerned with the interpretation of the concept of human dignity (‘Die Würde des Menschen’ – in a more literal translation: The dignity of the human being): when does this dignity begin and where does it end? Does an 8-cell blastocyst have human dignity, or a braindead patient whose metabolism is kept going by machines? Is the production of embryonic stem cells from blastocysts left over after IVF treatment a violation of human dignity? These questions are fundamentally important for all bioethics legislation in Germany, because article 1 allows no exception to the inviolability of human dignity. While article 2, which states the right to free development and right to life, keeps options open where the fundamental rights of others are affected (e.g. those of a woman seeking abortion), there is absolutely no messing with the dignity of human beings guaranteed by article 1. The current stem cell legislation, passed in January 2002 by a cross-party majority of biosceptic backbenchers in the Bundestag, is based on the assumption that human dignity sets in when an egg is fertilized, no matter whether this happens in vivo or in vitro. As a consequence, German researchers are not allowed to produce embryonic stem cells, or even to collaborate with researchers abroad who produce them. They are only allowed to import stem cell lines generated before the first of January 2002, provided they obtain specific permission from an ethics council based at the Robert Koch Institut in Berlin. So far, the council has granted only five such permissions. While the scientific community tends to disagree with the constitutional protection of undifferentiated cells as a matter of principle, it has learned to live with the current situation, which is regarded as a compromise that allows at least some research on imported stem cell lines to proceed over the next few years. A truce had been established between the sceptics who don’t want any research based on embryos, and researchers who would ideally want to do a lot more than they are allowed to right now. At the end of October, this truce was severely shaken by a speech of the justice minister, Brigitte Zypries (she replaced Herta Däubler-Gmelin who had mentioned Bush and Hitler in the same sentence during the buildup to the Iraq war). Even before Zypries addressed her audience at the Humboldt University, Berlin, a version of her manuscript circulated in media offices and started to send out shockwaves. The minister questioned whether an artificially fertilized egg can have human dignity. She argued that an egg or blastocyst does not per se have the ability to develop into a human being, as it requires the support of a woman willing to carry the pregnancy to term. As the state cannot force anybody to do that, the pre-implantation embryo has only a ‘perspective on human dignity’ which can be realized by a suitable woman, but not by the state. Zypries made clear, however, that the embryos in question have News focus