Only the respect of the "principle of the unconditional priority of human life" can guarantee "the quality of scientific research" in the sphere of embryo research as well. This was repeated today by the Bioethics Commission of the Swiss Bishops Conference in a release in which it takes position on the draft constitutional article and the federal law about "research into human beings" (Lrh). Although they consider positive "the will to standardise the many different legislations and practices and to fill the gaps", the Swiss Bishops note that "the adopted perspective does not meet the requirements of the Swiss Constitution", whereby "human dignity is the supreme constituent principle of the legal order". The Lrh, denounce the Swiss Bishops, "adopts a utilitarian position which is happy to just balance two values that are wrongly considered antagonistic: the protection of the person against the freedom of research". In particular, the Bioethics Commission challenges the idea that ethics may boil down "to an assessment of the risk/benefit ratio" and states it is "unacceptable to consider a ‘minimal risk’ for a foetus what is in fact a bigger risk for it". Equally "unacceptable", according to the Swiss Bishops, is "the different legislation governing the ‘in vivo’ embryo and that governing the ‘in vitro’ embryo", since it assumes that "a change of circumstance may change the nature of the human embryo".
