The Robert Schoch foun­da­tion (RSF) -​ is a pri­vate ini­tia­tive by a group of in­di­vid­u­als high­ly con­scious of the ad­vances made in the field of medicine and bi­ol­o­gy and which give so­ci­ety un­prece­dent­ed con­trol over hu­man life. Mind­ful of the hopes and promis­es, but al­so of the in­her­ent risks to which cur­rent biomed­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies and prac­tices give rise, they came to­geth­er to set up an or­ga­ni­za­tion de­signed to pro­vide re­li­able in­for­ma­tion and to en­cour­age the widest pos­si­ble dis­cus­sion on both the scope and stakes in­volved.

RSF’s stat­ed ob­jec­tive is to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of bioethics based on the re­spect and the pro­mo­tion of the in­di­vid­u­al, from con­cep­tion to nat­u­ral death.
RSF is in favour of progress but not of a cer­tain “ide­ol­o­gy of progress” which sat­is­fies it­self with faits ac­com­plis or en­tic­ing prospects. RSF in­tends, there­fore, to ex­er­cise crit­i­cal vig­i­lance with re­gard to sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances – more es­pe­cial­ly in the field of biomedicine.

RSF is in­de­pen­dent of any po­lit­i­cal or re­li­gious par­ties or groups. It is non-​con­fes­sion­al and ad­heres to the prin­ci­ple of State sec­u­lar­ism, based on the re­spect of and open­ness to re­li­gious tra­di­tions.