GERMANY CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has agreed to a free parliamentary vote on whether to allow pre-screening of fertilised embryos in Germany.
The leader of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) announced the conscience vote on “pre-implantation diagnostics” (PID) after admitting she opposed the procedure, intended to identify possible genetic disorders.
“In my view we should ban pre-implantation diagnostics,” said Dr Merkel, reflecting the CDU party programme.
The complicated ethical issues involved in PID, including the criteria under which fertilised embryos are selected or discarded, carry an extra burden in Germany.
Memories of Nazi-era euthanasia and eugenics programmes linger in the background of public debate, alongside the memory of experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners.
Dr Merkel’s spokesman announced the conscience vote yesterday after her Free Democrat (FDP) junior coalition partners said their MPs would vote in favour of the procedure.
“If science is in a position to identify serious illness ahead of time and spare people suffering, then we should use this knowledge,” said FDP parliamentary leader Birgit Homburger.
Party colleague Christian Lindner, FDP general secretary, got in a dig by expressing in public his “regret that this chancellor, as a scientist, hasn’t given greater recognition to this method”.
Dr Merkel’s public opposition to PID comes two years after she backed the import of stem-cells for research purposes.
The timing of the CDU leader’s public statement on PID is interesting. The coalition parties are scheduled to hold talks on PID next week, but a Bundestag spokesman said yesterday that no date has been fixed for a PID vote.
Opposition parties suggested Dr Merkel was using the disagreement to boost her flagging popularity with conservatives in her own party. The PID debate comes after Dr Merkel dismissed as “utterly failed” the “multicultural” model so despised by conservatives, who see migrants as having an onus to integrate into German society.
Officially, the PID procedure has been forbidden in Germany since 1990, but legal grey areas remained. In July, Germany’s federal court in Leipzig ordered fresh legislation to clarify matters after a case was forced by a Berlin gynaecologist. He went to the authorities after performing PID on three patients who had experienced miscarriages and were worried about genetic defects in their children. After testing for and implanting the healthy embryos, as his patients requested, he left the other embryos to die.
The debate has divided German society: doctors have called for clear rules and limited PID; the Catholic Church opposes the procedure, while Lutheran church representatives come down on both sides. Of the political parties, only the FDP is wholly in favour.
Meanwhile, popular defence minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg has dismissed as “bizarre” speculation that he might oust Dr Merkel as German leader next year if the CDU polls badly in regional elections.
Mr zu Guttenberg (38), has replaced Ms Merkel as Germany’s most popular politician, with approval ratings of over 70 per cent to her 40 per cent.