[National ethics committees and representative democracy: is the new German ethics committee more "democratic"?].
The bill passed in April 2007 by the German parliament aims to confer democratic legitimacy on the German Ethics Committee (deutscher Ethikrat) which has replaced the former National Ethics Committee (nationaler Ethikrat) set up in 2001. This law results from a wide debate which began in 2005 within the political parties about the role in democracy of the bodies charged with advising the people's representatives in the areas of biotechnology and modern medicine. In this article, the author explains why it was necessary to confer a certain democratic legitimacy on the new Ethics Committee and analyses the relation that exists between the democratic principle, the work of this type of committee and the national institutional structure retained to stimulate the debate and advise the political decision-makers, and even to prepare legislation concerning bioethics.
Dagron
Stéphanie
S
Institut Max-Planck pour le droit public étranger et le droit international public, Heidelberg.
D001709:Biotechnology / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D003709:Democracy; D017041:Ethics Committees / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics