In the field of medicine and health, many ethical questions arise. For example, access to and the fair distribution of services in the solidarity-based health care system are at the centre of social debates. There are also repeated controversies on how to react appropriately to the rising costs of health care. This problem is further intensified by demographic change and the associated challenges for medicine and care.
Another important issue is to ensure adequate self-determination for patients. For example, the right to reproductive self-determination must be taken into account in the ethical assessment of new developments in reproductive medicine. At the end of life, too, urgent questions of patient autonomy arise, for example when it comes to dignified dying. All these issues require ethical reflection in order to reconcile justified individual claims with those of the community.
