THOMAS HEINEMANN is a trained internal medicine and gastroenterology specialist as well as a philosopher. He holds the chair for Ethics, Theory, and History of Medicine at Philosophical-Theological University of Vallendar, Germany. He was a member of the German Ethics Council from 2012 to 2016, is a member of the German delegation of the Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe (CDBIO), and is chair or member of numerous senior level ethics committees. His research in biomedical ethics predominantly concerns the moral status of the human embryo, stem cell technology, human genetics, research ethics, neuroethics as well as clinical ethics.