2 - 1998

Biomedicin and Genetic Engineering

Grateful Service to Creation

Excerpt from the press release of the chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)

Präses Manfred Kock, on Easter 1998

"Throughout the ages, people have always tried to cling to progress, which promises to banish death and disease. In our times this effort has been taken to the extreme. People try to subjugate nature, develop new drugs and machines that prolong life, albeit in exchange for new risks to survival.

In recent times, the issue of profitability in medicine has gained an ever stronger voice. To me, Easter means that we must not subordinate the life of the disabled, chronically ill and dying to a utility thinking that jeopardises their human dignity. It must not fall victim to a "medicine without a human face". To some of us laws, orders, prohibitions, and taboos may seem like oppressive remnants of the past. They appear to obstruct progress. Economic interests and thirst for knowledge through research make people take advantage of every legal loophole. And they don’t mind throwing long-established principles to the wind, in the belief that they can live without the rules and maxims of earlier generations.

We must be aware of the danger of irreversible errors, especially in the field of genetic engineering. Easter’s "joyful liberation enabling us to do grateful service to creation" (second thesis of the Theological Declaration of Barmen of 1934) makes Christians take a stand for the protection of life, when the power of money is in danger of diminishing the value of human life."