From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 01:48:10 MDT
Amara wrote:
> Regarding Sloterdijk and genetic research in Germany, I discovered
> that the former president of largest science funding agency in Germany
> is a well-known molecular biologist. His name is Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker.
> I believe that his position ended last year.
>
> Because, or in spite of his specialty, Winnacker seems to be
> particularly conservative with regards to genetic research.
> I wonder if his views will continue to carry weight with
> regards to genetic research here.
Winnacker was and still is a prominent figure when it comes to advising
politicians on legislative issues about embryonic research, stem cells,
cloning etc. Last year there has been a broad discussion about allowing
German scientist to do stem cell research with embryonic material. The issue
was whether to loosen up the conditions for working with stem cells.
Producing embryonic stem cells is forbidden in Germany. But scientists are
in a pretty much restricted way allowed to use stem cells that were produced
abroad.[!!] A big part of the public discussion on therapeutic cloning was
focussing on this apparent contradiction.
Winnacker has ethical objections against it because the production of stem
cells results in the destruction of the human embryo. You can feel that he
is suffering in his conflict to hold an ethical position and thus imposing
restrictions on science or to promote free research. In spite of
his conservative evaluation I found him behaving with integrity. He seems to
be really torn about this issue and is avoiding oversimplifications for
political advantages.
But to me it seems like most of the academic celebrities have no problem to
order a lobster in a restaurant, knowing that this animal will be thrown
into a pot of boiling water alive. But they are crying out loud about a tiny
*raspberry* of an eight-cell human embryo with no traces of a nervous system
that will be given up after 10 days of cell division. A case for Peter
Singer and his animal rights movement.
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