Recent media coverage of biomedical engineers who have designed a synthetic yeast genome, resequencing the yeast DNA in the process to eliminate redundancy and reduce its size, has briefly brought to public attention a gamut of issues about the preparedness of scientific regulators for the pace of scientific advances.

I, Rouven, have now been the editor of our wonderful EACME newsletter for more than 8 years. 8 years! The time has come, to pass on this privilege to someone ‘new’. This is not easy for me. The EACME as a whole, and the newsletter in particular, are very important to me.

At this year’s EACME conference in Leuven coming September we celebrate "30 years of Bioethics in Europe." EACME hence exists for 30 years already. On the one hand, this is a long time. On the other hand, biomedical ethics is still a very young discipline – if it can be even called a distinct discipline.

I am pleased to present you with the new EACMENewsletter. In this edition you will receive insights into a variety of subjects, such as a PHD-Project of the Swansea University, clinical research with children in Spain and the birthday of the Centre of Ethics Medicine in Bristol, UK.

The year 2015 is coming to a close. A good year for EACME! We could gain a good number of new member institutes and we had the privilege to conduct our yearly conference in wonderful Cagliari, Italy. We want to say a heartfelt word of thanks to all those of our members whose great commitment and hard work contributes to the success of our association.

You are currently holding the latest newsletter of EACME in your hands, this time as a special edition on the topic CLINICAL ETHICS - DEBATES, TRENDS AND CHALLENGES.

We look back on an exciting EACME conference in Lille, while already planning the next conference. In September 2015, we will meet on the subject of clinical ethics in Cagliari, Sardinia.

Dear friends, this year the EACME conference will be held in Lille, France from October 2nd – 4th. The topic of the conference is: frailty, vulnerability and social participation.

Perspectives on Assisted Dying in Europe. Death may be seen as the greatest of harms or conversely, as a release from greater harms of suffering and indignity. The way in which we view death will of course influence our beliefs about the moral rightness or wrongness of assisted dying.

This is my first editorial as new president of EACME. During the annual EACME meeting in Bochum, a new Bureau was established. Rouven Porz is prepared to place his talents further in the service of EACME as its Secretary-General. Ruud ter Meulen is taking up the task of Treasurer.