IMPLANTATION GENETIC DIAGNOSIS ON THE DIVIDE GERMANY - Half of the German Ethics Council is in favor of his practice is limited to Paul De Maeyer
ROME, March 9, 2011 (ZENIT.org) .- About one week before the debate on pre-implantation diagnosis (PID or "Preimplantation Diagnosis", also called PDG or "Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis") in the Bundestag (lower house), the Council of Ethics of Germany (Deutsche Ethikrat) made public Tuesday, March 8 in Berlin an opinion on the practice, which reflects a deep split in the independent advisory body.
dell'Ethikrat While 13 members - that is exactly half - are in favor of a limited genetic testing on embryos in vitro, 11 members reject the PID and demand a total ban. There was also a view particularly to Eckhard. The expert in medical ethics, which is medical director of the University Hospital Essen, and teaches at the University of Bayreuth, has submitted a binding list of malformations and diseases in which the PID should be allowed. One member abstained dell'Ethikrat: Weyma Lübbe, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Regensburg.
According to the proponents of a partial legalization, including the President dell'Ethikrat, that is, the former Federal Minister of Justice, Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig, and also the former president of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD ), Jürgen Schmude, the PID should be authorized when there is a high medical risk "that the embryo is a carrier of a hereditary handicap or a serious genetic disease. In addition, PGD should be allowed when there is the possibility of inherited chromosomal abnormalities that endanger the survival of the child outside the womb. While the PID for sex selection should be prohibited (except in cases of certain diseases related to the child's sex), supporters reject the idea of \u200b\u200ba catalog of anomalies that require genetic diagnosis. Also exclude the use of the technique and to embryo selection to create a child as a compatible donor or to detect the presence of chromosomal abnormalities linked to age of the mother (such as Down syndrome or trisomy 21).
In the opinion of opponents of the PID within all'Ethikrat, including Monsignor Anton Losinger, Auxiliary Bishop of Augsburg, and the Catholic theologian Eberhard Schockenhoff, a professor of moral theology in Freiburg im Breisgau, authorize the technical means to reject a human life based on undesirable traits. The PID also includes the creation of a large amount of embryos "spare". To fear is also a "breaking of the dam, with a shift towards the creation of children known as" custom. " Against a partial legalization of genetic diagnosis have also expressed the two retired bishops who sit in the body of the EKD Advisory, Wolfgang Huber and Christoph Kähler.
It was the second time in Germany an advisory body is expressed the PID. The first time, in 2003, a majority of two thirds of the then National Council of Ethics (National Ethikrat) - a creation of the coalition "red-green" of the Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder - had said that she supports a partial legalization.
Opponents of preimplantation genetic diagnosis do not hide their disappointment at the dell'Ethikrat opinion, that some call a "Jein," a "ni." "The selection of embryos outside the body (breast) is a massive violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the law on the protection of embryos," Bishop said yesterday. Losinger, according to reports from the site of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK). The refusal of an embryo on the basis of certain chromosomal features purple according to the bishop not only human dignity and the fundamental right to life but also the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of disability established by the German Constitution. "Here you get a break ethics of the dam, because the human embryo is a human at the embryonic stage since the union of egg and sperm cell. At the embryonic stage as a man has dignity and right to life," he continued Losinger .
In an interview the agency KNA (March 8), the theologian Schockenhoff said he was "surprised" by the opinion of the body. According Schockenhoff, the main objection is that the PID select life and makes a "distinction between life worth living and life unworthy of living." For the theologian, is transmitted to people with disabilities the message that if they had been conceived at the time of the PID would never be born. You also need to be afraid - so it goes - that efforts to treat certain hereditary abnormalities decrease, as already happens in the U.S.. We should not forget either that the PID has limitations. Its effectiveness "is grotesquely overstated," says Schockenhoff.
to rekindle the debate on the PID in Germany was a ruling in July by the Federal Court of Cassation (BGH o Bundesgerichtshof). Il tribunale con sede a Lipsia aveva assolto il 6 luglio 2010 il ginecologo Matthias Bloechle e stabilito che non si può vietare il ricorso alla diagnosi genetica preimpianto né impedire a genitori con una disposizione a gravi difetti ereditari di scegliere la strada della selezione embrionale. Bloechle aveva eseguito una PID nel 2005 e 2006 nel suo "Kinderwunschzentrum" di Berlino a tre coppie predisposte a patologie genetiche (una delle coppie in questione aveva già una figlia handicappata) e trasferito in utero solo embrioni "sani".
Anche se la sentenza del 6 luglio scorso non è vincolante per il legislatore e vale solo per il caso concreto del dottor Bloechle, si teme che Soon other courts will follow the logic of the Bundesgerichtshof, an element that forces the German parliament to intervene and overcome the current "gray area" in the legislation. Next week, Thursday, March 17, the Bundestag will examine three different bills submitted by four groups of cross members. While the final vote is scheduled for June or July - that is, before the summer break -, what unites the three proposals is that, in principle, maintain the prohibition of the PID. Two of the three, however, provide for the waiver.
to support the bill that rejects the use of the technique are among others the Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), the head group of the population of the Union (CDU-CSU) in the Bundestag Volker Kauder, a former Social Democratic Minister of Health Ulla Schmidt and the deputy chairman of the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens) .
A second project is supported by Ulrike Flach, vice group leader of the FDP (Liberal), Peter Hintze (CDU), Economy Undersecretary, Carola Reimann, an expert in matters of health of the SPD, and Petra Sitte, deputy group head of Die Linke (The Left). Maintains the prohibition of PID, but provides for exceptions, as in the case of a predisposition of the parents, the possibility of a miscarriage or the baby is born dead. Decisive la gravità della malattia o malformazione ereditaria e il criterio della probabilità. Per evitare abusi, la proposta prevede una consulenza specialistica obbligatoria, il via libera da parte di una commissione etica e il consenso scritto della donna. E la PID potrà essere realizzata solo presso centri autorizzati.
Il terzo progetto di legge, che ha l'appoggio dei deputati René Röspel (SPD), Priska Hinz (Verdi) e Patrick Meinhardt (FDP), conferma a sua volta il divieto ma permette la diagnosi genetica in condizioni molto circoscritte, in particolare quando la sopravvivenza del feto non è garantita o quando il nascituro non supererebbe il primo anno di vita, come nel caso di bambini affetti dalla trisomia 13 (la sindrome di Patau). Il criterio decisivo qui non è la gravità della patologia trasmessa ma la previsione di sopravvivenza.
L'esito del dibattito si preannuncia incerto. Le pressioni a favore di un'autorizzazione della PID "con paletti" sono forti. Nel corso delle ultime settimane, varie rinomate accademie scientifiche si sono espresse a favore della tecnica, fra cui l'Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze Leopoldina. A fine febbraio anche una commissione scientifica dell'Ordine dei Medici Tedeschi (Bundesärztekammer o BÄK) aveva auspicato in un "memorandum" ampie deroghe alla proibizione della PID.
Un'insolita initiative against PID was launched recently by two members instead of the big churches. In a joint letter sent to all federal ministers and many members of Hesse, the bishop of Fulda, Heinz Josef Algermissen Archbishop, and Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck, Martin Hein, took the defense of embryos in vitro . What deeply disturbs the two bishops is that "the embryo has the genetic damage that must die" (Die Tagespost, March 4).
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