[Can Happiness be "Produced"?].

Psychiatry und psychotherapy aim at relieving their patients from mental diseases and disturbances and at enabling them to feel happier than they would do otherwise. Thus, part of their raison d'être depends on the chance to achieve happiness by a systematic effort. A "pursuit of happiness" along this line has repeatedly met with skepticism.

Embryonic stem cell research and the argument of complicity.

While the argument of complicity is only rarely discussed in bioethics, it is of obvious relevance to the issue of imported embryonic stem cells in countries in which the derivation of stem cells from early human embryos is legally prohibited and/or morally rejected. Complicity means that making use of the results or products of an illegal or morally problematic activity is itself morally problematic, although generally to a lesser degree than the original activity. The question arises as to which conditions make the argument of complicity plausible, thus supporting attacks against legislation that aims to promote research based on 'fruits of a forbidden tree'.

Human cloning and human dignity.

Judging from the official documents dealing with the moral and legal aspects of human reproductive cloning there seems to be a nearly worldwide consensus that reproductive cloning is incompatible with human dignity. The certainty of this judgement is, however, not matched by corresponding arguments. Is the incompatibility of reproductive with human dignity an ultimate moral intuition closed to further argument? The paper considers several ways by which the intuition might be connected with more familiar applications of the concept of human dignity, and argues that there is no such connection.