Pre-Implantation Diagnostics (PID) – the Impact of a Limited Approval in Germany

18 Oct Pre-Implantation Diagnostics (PID) – the Impact of a Limited Approval in Germany

National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech)
2011

Pre-implantation diagnostics (PID) is a diagnosis procedure that makes it possible for parents, who have a high risk of giving birth to a child with a serious hereditary disease, to give birth to a child who is not affected by the respective disease. In Germany, PID was considered to be prohibited pursuant to the Embryo Protection Law of 1990. The German Federal Supreme Court has argued in a ruling of July 6, 2010, that a prohibition of PID cannot be inferred with the requisite certainty from the Embryo Protection Law. Hence the lawmaker is called upon to take a clear-cut stand as to the question of the permissibility of PID. With the publication on hand, Leopoldina, which is the National Academy of Sciences, acatech, which is the German Academy of Science and Engineering, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (representative for the Association of German Academies of Sciences) take on this current question and take an ad-hoc stand as to the question of pre-implantation diagnostics.