Irene Domenici awarded Otto Hahn Medal

The Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy congratulates its scientist Dr. Irene Domenici on receiving the Otto Hahn Medal. The Max Planck Society (MPS) awards the prize, which is endowed with 7,500 euros, for outstanding achievements by young scientists, usually as part of their dissertation. "The medal is a wonderful recognition of my work and motivates me to continue to give my best in my research", says Irene Domenici, who has been working in the Institute's Social Law Department since 2018 were she also wrote her award-winning thesis. The official award ceremony took place during the annual meeting of the MPS.

In her dissertation "Between Ethical Oversight and State Neutrality – Introducing Controversial Technologies into the Public Healthcare Systems of Germany, Italy and England", Domenici explores the difficult relationship between ethics and law. Using two case studies – pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and non-invasive prenatal tests – she examines the extent to which ethical requirements may be included in reimbursement decisions in the public healthcare system.

The consideration of ethical concerns is problematic when legally binding decisions are made on this basis. In modern, democratic states, people have different conceptions of what is morally good. Ethical neutrality seeks to ensure that the justification of the state's action is based on reasons that can be accepted by society as a whole. In her analysis, Domenici shows that, in the countries investigated – Germany, Italy and England –, ethical and religious factors certainly had an influence on whether, how and under what conditions the selected new healthcare technologies were integrated into the public healthcare system. The dissertation has been published open access in the series "Studien aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik" at Nomos.

Irene Domenici studied law at the University of Trento, where she was already awarded the prize for the best master's thesis in bioethics and bio-law. At the MPI for Social Law and Social Policy, she is currently working on the project "Life in Dignity", which deals with minimum income in Europe, and continues to conduct research in the field of health law.