Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference and bishop of Mainz, made an appeal to doctors on 31 January, urging them to recognize the limits of medical research. Intervening at the 14th meeting of the Medical Service of the healthcare insurance companies of Hesse at Bad Wildungen, Lehmann declared that “an evident tension exists today between what is technically feasible and what is morally responsible. Intensive medicine permits the survival of patients to a surprising degree. On the other hand”, he objected, “it raises the thorny question whether doctors are authorized to abandon attempts to prolong life, if the patient is suffering without any hope of a recovery”. Lehmann emphasized the tendency to ignore “responsibility at the moral level in the field of technological processes”. This, he said, is also caused by the “anonymity of the procedure”: “many research projects are conducted without there being any clearly recognisable and responsible subject. Each makes his own contribution to the ‘functioning’ of the system but has no chance of controlling the whole”, Lehmann observed. He also urged doctors to bear in mind the limits of an ethical nature to be placed on the “excess of technological power”. “An undeniable limit exists where the person intends qualitatively to improve his/her nature with technical interventions”, with the intention of “creating a new person”. “Even if there were limitless possibilities of correction, the objective of physiologically or genetically optimising the human being to achieve an ideal level must be rejected. Humanity should rather adapt to its imperfect and diversified nature”, he warned.
