KIE: The chairman of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) Committee on Medical Ethics, the Council of Medical Sciences, reviews issues of ethical concern to East German medicine. According to Tanneberger, ethical conflicts in health care are avoided in the GDR largely due to the socialist nature of public services. Ethical problems in medicine primarily involve research with human subjects, with animal experimentation and implementation of biomedical technologies as topics of interest as well. A nationwide system of ethical guidance and control has been created, headed by the Council of Medical Sciences and including the scientific councils of the individual medical disciplines and of the main research projects supported by the state, as well as the faculties of the medical universities. Tanneberger emphasizes that in the GDR, the intention is to develop a sense of responsibility among all those involved in medical research, rather than to impose a regulatory system.