Helmut Frister, Chairman of the German Ethics Council, has welcomed the Bundestag’s decision to mandate the evaluation of prenatal testing. Frister noted that the Ethics Council previously addressed non-invasive prenatal genetic tests in a 2013 statement. At that time, the Council drew attention to the heightened risk of numerous false positive results and the potential for widespread application to negatively influence societal attitudes towards people with disabilities. Given this background, Frister praised the German Bundestag for calling upon the federal government to conduct a thorough evaluation of the impact of these genetic tests. However, he emphasized that the objective should not be to limit individual possibilities. Instead, the aim should be to enable potential parents to make a more conscious and well-informed decision by providing better counseling.
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