Germany's main grant-giving agency, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), is proposing a much-needed relaxation of the country's restrictive embryo protection law, which bans the cultivation of human stem-cell lines from embryo cells. In doing so, it crosses swords with a hostile government whose position on the sanctity of embryonic cells appears unshakeable (see page 119).

Coincidentally, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has created a national ethics council to advise the government on bioethics (see page 124). Stem-cell research will be its baptism of fire, and could be a precedent for how Germany handles future ethical dilemmas in basic research.

The DFG has not rushed its thinking on human embryonic stem-cell research. It has taken due time to consider the issue thoroughly, and has reached fair and balanced conclusions. Its suggestion that, in well-justified cases and with appropriate checks and controls, researchers should be allowed to import and even to cultivate human embryonic stem-cell lines is a reasonable response to recent scientific advances. These advances increasingly indicate the medical potential of stem cells to replace diseased tissues and organs.

It is true, of course, that the DFG's position is driven by the interests of the scientific community. But this does not mean that such interests are inevitably different from those of society, which will probably not want to miss out on any medical benefits that might arise.

Appropriately and inevitably, German citizens want any move towards the use of humans — including the helpless embryo — for research purposes to be discussed in depth. Soul-searching debate on embryonic stem-cell research has filled newspapers and spawned a stream of bioethical conferences over the past two years. The DFG has held back from endorsing the research, arguing for its restriction to adult stem cells until the weight of scientific information justified crossing a new boundary — as it now believes is the case.

But when does society's wider debate end? The government's demand for it to continue smacks of fear of taking a tough decision the year before a general election. Hopefully, the new national ethics council will not feel the need to start from scratch, or unduly delay reporting its conclusions. As Germany learnt to its cost in gene sequencing, late entry to a fast-moving research field leaves the research community and others at a significant disadvantage.