Bioethics

Innovations raise questions that we never had to consider before. For the good of society and every individual, there is the need to view progress through the prism of ethical considerations.

As an innovative company, we cannot always simply fall back on existing standards for new technologies and developments. Instead, we need to define standards. For this reason, we set up the Ethics Advisory Panel for Science and Technology in 2011.  

Looking more closely, asking questions and thinking ahead!

Ethics provides us with guidelines for how we make rapid progress in sciences and how we can use the technologies developed from this in a perfectly responsible and ethical manner. We want to create the best possible benefit for society, people and animals. It is therefore important for us to develop positions on ethical approaches, with a special focus on bioethics. In order to reliably incorporate the external view into our actions, we founded the Ethics Advisory Panel for Science and Technology (MEAP, formerly known as Bioethics Advisory Panel MBAP) in 2011. This expresses clear recommendations for bioethical issues, which serve as a guideline for our behavior and our entrepreneurial actions. An overview of our positions:

  • When using human stem cells and genome-editing methods, ethical action is always our top priority.
  • Technologies such as “CRISPR gene scissors”  have the potential to change our society for the better, but also have clear limits in their application.
  • With the aid of CRISPR, serious diseases could be treated and therapies could be developed more quickly.

Together with the MEAP experts, we have thus formulated bioethical principles for genome editing and stem cell as well as fertility research, which are binding for all our employees and partners.

Learn more