Contact Section Leader
Prof.Dr.med.Dr.phil. Eva Winkler
E-mail: eva.winkler@med.uni-heidelberg.de
The Section for Translational Medical Ethics is a dedicated core facility for applied ethics at the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, a partnership between German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Heidelberg University Hospital, Medical Faculty, Heidelberg University. Main research areas are: Research Ethics (e.g. data driven & precision medicine, genome sequencing and editing), Clinical Ethics (e.g. end of life decisions, organizational ethics, AI ethics) and Public Health Ethics (e.g. resource allocation, secondary use of health data).
The section's expertise is represented in its participation in numerous initiatives and committees (e.g. Central Ethics Commission of the German Medical Association, Academy for Ethics in Medicine (AEM - Society for Medical Ethics in Germany), German Human Genome-Phenome Archive (GHGA), 1+mio Genomes Initiative, Genomic Data Infrastructure Project (GDI), Network of University Medicine (NUM), Medical Informatics Initiative (MII), EURAT platform (Ethical and Legal Aspects of Translational Medicine)).
Due to the impressing medical & technological progress fostered by structural and systemic changes in health care, ethical issues in oncology and research constantly gain importance. Such issues include, for instance, the informed consent process in research, patient’s rights and the right to self-determination or the ethical justification of expensive treatments facing limited resources in health care.
The concept of Empirical Ethics combines empirical studies in patient care and research with ethical analysis (cf. figure 1).