Integrity – The Virtue of Virtues 317But “integrity” also has a political and territorial meaning: territorial
integrity of a country means respecting existing borders of a country and
not questioning their existence from either outside or inside. “The terri-
torial integrity of the DRC shall be respected^240 ” said Antonio Di Rupo,
Prime Minister of Belgium, to the UN in 2012. Integrity is understood
here as the respect of an entity: an organisation, an institution or a terri-
tory or country. This expression is part of the International Law vocabu-
lary.
In the field of bioethics, respecting the integrity of a living entity—a
human being or an animal—according to Swiss law, is allowing only the
genetic modification of an organism that does not affect the integrity of
a being. It was very difficult to interpret this law while I was acting as a
member of the Federal Commission on Ethics in non-human biotechnol-
ogy (CENH) during many years.^241
Integrity in scientific research means not plagiarising, or not publish-
ing research which has no outcome (e.g. medical or pharmaceutical re-
search). There is a network on “Ethics and Integrity” that deals exclu-
sively on integrity in research.^242
“Environmental integrity” is one of the five parts of the “Earth Char-
ter”, adopted in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro by the international community.
Environmental integrity includes protecting the environment and its bio-
diversity. It does not mean that we are not allowed to change the natural
environment, but we shall strive to keep the potential and the potentiali-
ty of the natural environment.
This principle also applies to the integrity of a person or of a com-
munity. According to Protestant ethics, integrity shall not be considered
as a virtue to keep the status quo or an ideal of the original creation or
the paradise that we risk to lose. On the contrary, integrity of the envi-
240
Di Rupo, Antonio, Belgium’s Prime Minister, addressing the UN AGM on 26
September 241 2012.
242 http://www.ekah.admin.ch/fr/page-daccueil (in French)^
http://www.ethics-and-integrity.net/