The Institute for Jewish Ethics Presents:
Designer Genes
Jewish Ethics and Human Cloning in Light of Modern Science
With
Dr. David Keleti
and
Rabbi Reuven Goldstein
Thursday, April 3, 2014
12:00-1:30 PM
Institute for Jewish Ethics
Approved by PACLE for 1.5 Hours Ethics
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Babies with Designer Genes: Are We Parents or Consumers?
Dr. David Keleti
Genesis 30:37−39 [JPS]
37 And Jacob took him rods of fresh poplar, and of the almond and of the plane-tree; and peeled white streaks in them,
making the white appear which was in the rods. 38 And he set the rods which he had peeled over against the flocks in the
gutters in the watering-troughs where the flocks came to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink. 39 And the
flocks conceived at the sight of the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted.
1863
Gregor Mendel, in his study of peas, discovers that traits are transmitted from parents to progeny by discrete, independent
units, later called genes, laying the groundwork for the field of genetics.
1903
U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Herbert Webber coins the word "clon" (which evolves into "clone") to refer to
"any group of cells or organisms produced asexually from a single sexually produced ancestor."
1928
Nobel laureate Dr. Hans Spemann performs the first nuclear transfer procedure using salamander embryos.
1943-1944
Mengele (y-sh”u) performs experiments on nearly 1,500 sets of twins imprisoned at Auschwitz to determine similarities
and differences in the genetics of twins (Wikipedia).
1980
U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case Diamond v. Chakrabarty "live, human made microorganism is patentable material."
1993
A March of Dimes poll found that 43 percent of Americans would engage in genetic engineering “simply to enhance their
children’s looks or intelligence.”
1996
Dr. Ian Wilmut from the Roslin Institute of Scotland clone the world's the first sheep from adult cells named Dolly. Dolly is
the first mammal cloned from a cell of an adult animal. Dolly lived for 6 ½ years
1997
President Clinton proposed a five year moratorium on federal and privately funded human cloning research. Later in the
year, he proposed legislation to ban the cloning of humans for at least 5 years.
Thousands of biologists and physicians signed a voluntary 5-year moratorium on human cloning in the United States.
Dr. Richard Seed announced that he intended to clone a human before federal laws could effectively prohibit the process.
1998
Nineteen European nations signed a ban on human cloning.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that it had authority over human cloning.
2000
The first patents for cloning are given to the scientists who cloned Dolly, giving their company, Geron Bio-med, exclusive
right to the technologies they used.
U.S.-based biotech firm BioTransplant Inc. and Massachusetts General Hospital announce the cloning of a line of miniature
pigs, to be used to grow organs for human transplants.
2001
Noah, a gaur and the first of an endangered species to be cloned, is produced by Advanced Cell Technologies.
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CC (“carbon copy”), the first female cat cloned and the first clone of a domestic animal, is produced by Genetic Savings &
Clone. The company that wants to go into business reproducing pets.
A fertility clinic in New Jersey impregnated fifteen women with embryos fashioned from their own eggs, their partner’s
sperm, and a small portion of an egg donated by a second woman. The procedure was designed to work around defects in
the would-be mother’s egg—but in at least two of the cases, tests showed the resulting babies carried genetic material from
all three “parents.”
Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts clone human embryos for the first time.
President Bush limits federally funded human embryonic stem cell research to stem cell lines that have already been
created.
2002
California becomes the first U.S. state to approve a law legalizing the therapeutic cloning of embryos.
2003
Britain becomes the first country to issue research licenses for human embryonic cloning to create stem cells. It specifies
therapeutic, not reproductive, cloning.
Scientists in University of Idaho announce they have cloned a mule, Idaho Gem, from a mule fetus—a sterile hybrid
normally produced by breeding a donkey and a horse.
2008
Dr. Wood and Andrew French, CSO of Stemagen, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human
embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a source of viable embryonic stem cells. The 5 cloned
embryos were subsequently killed, so it is unclear if the embryos could have developed further. Dr. Wood stated that using
the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal.
2009
Pyrenean Ibex was the first extinct animal to be cloned back to life at the Centre of Food Technology and Research of
Aragon, using the preserved DNA of the skin samples from 2001 and domestic goat egg-cells. The clone lived for seven
minutes before dying of lung defects.
2011
Akira Iritani of Kyoto University reportedly said that his team will extract DNA from a mammoth carcass that had been
preserved in a Russian laboratory and insert it into the egg cells of an African elephant in hopes of producing a wolly
mammoth embryo within six years.
2013
An international group of scientists published a report of successful human cloning involving the somatic cell nuclear
transfer from human fibroblasts to oocytes and resulted in viable embryos developing to the blastocyst stage. The authors
managed to obtain embryonic stem cell from the blastocysts which can lead to therapeutic cloning.
Read more @: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193002.html#ixzz2upiYThkk
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/clonezone/
http://bsp.med.harvard.edu/?q=node/18
http://www.clonesafety.org/cloning/facts/timeline/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9f9Rfawcg
starting from 3:10
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“Ultimately, the dream of biologists is to have the sequence of DNA, the programming code of
life, and to be able to edit it the way you can a document on a word processor.” Michael West,
CEO of Advanced Cell Technology
“The union of egg and sperm from two individuals…would be too unpredictable with
intercourse.” Gregory Stock, Ph.D., biophysicist, best-selling author, biotechnology entrepreneur, and
the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of
Medicine
“Such modifications in human beings raise the possibility that we are changing not merely a single
individual but a host of future individuals as well, with potential for harm to occur to those individuals
and perhaps to humanity as a whole. Concerns involve issues ranging from the autonomy of future
individuals to distributive justice, fairness, and the application of these technologies to "enhancement"
rather than treating disease. In germline gene transfer, the persons being affected by the
procedure—those for whom the procedure is undertaken—do not yet exist. Thus, the potential
beneficiaries are not in a position to consent to or refuse such a procedure.” Kathi E. Hanna,
Ph.D., Science and Health Policy Consultant, National Human Genome Research Institute
“If there is a mystery at the heart of human condition, it is otherness: the otherness of man and
woman, parent and child. It is the space we make for otherness that makes love something other
than narcissism.” Sir Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s Former Chief Rabbi, responding when asked about
the announcement that Italian doctors were trying to clone humans.
“Mystery, however, is not one of the words that thrills engineers. They try and deliver solid
bridges, unyielding dams, reliable cars. We wouldn’t want it any other way. The only question is
if their product line should be expanded to include children.” Bill McKibben, environmentalist,
author, and journalist, including above excerpt from Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.
“With reprogenetics, parents can gain complete control over their destiny, with the ability to
guide and enhance the characteristics of their children, and their children’s children as well…
Anyone who accepts the right of affluent parents to provide their children with an expensive
private school education cannot use “unfairness” as a reason for rejecting the use of reprogenetic
technologies.” Lee M. Silver, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and
author of Remaking Eden.
“Suppose parents could add thirty points to their child’s IQ? Wouldn’t you want to do it? And if
you don’t, your child will be the stupidest in the neighborhood.” Lester Thurow, Ph.D., Professor
Emeritus of Economics at MIT.
“Of course, the problem about arms races is that you never really get anywhere. If everyone’s
adding thirty IQ points, then having an IQ of one hundred fifty won’t get you any closer to
Stanford than you were at the outset. You might be able to argue that society as a whole was helped,
because there was more total brainpower at work, but your kid won’t be any closer to the top of the
pack. All you’ll be able to do is guarantee she won’t be left hopelessly far behind.” Bill McKibben
“With germline manipulation, you get only one shot; the extra chromosome you stick in your kid when
he’s born is the one he carries throughout his life. So let’s say baby Sophie has a state-of-the-art gene
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job: her parents paid for the proteins discovered by, say, 2005 that, on average, yielded ten extra IQ
points. By the time Sophie is five, though, scientists will doubtless have discovered ten more genes
linked to intelligence. Now anyone with a platinum card can get twenty IQ points, not to mention a
memory boost and a permanent wrinkle-free brow. So by the time Sophie is twenty-five and in the job
market, she’s already more or less obsolete—the kids coming out of college just plain have better
hardware… The vision of one’s child as a nearly useless copy of Windows 95 should make parents
fight like hell to make sure we never get started down this path. But the vision gets lost easily in
the gushing excitement about “improving” the opportunities for our kids.” Bill McKibben
“Many of the most creative and valuable human lives are the result of particularly difficult
struggles against expectation and influence.” Martha Nussbaum, Ph.D., Professor of Law and
Ethics, University of Chicago.
Are we crossing the line from parenting to “product development?” (sociologist interviewed by
The New York Times)
What is the difference between how a parent and how a genetic engineer think of his/her
“product?”
The Human Growth Hormone Story
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Talmudic Perspective on Cloning
Rabbi Reuven Goldstein
I. Tiferes Yisroel- Yadayim 4:3
If something has no reason to be prohibited it is assumed to be permitted
II. Leviticus 19:19:
You should observe my statutes…you should not sow your field with mixed seed
III. Ramban ad loc:
The reasoning for the prohibition of mixed seeds… (is that) one who changes and deviates from
maaseh beraishis acts as if he thinks that G-D did not complete all the necessities of the world and
that he needs to help with creation and add on to the creations of the world.
IV. Pew Research on Cloning and Religion- Rabbi Moshe Tendler:
Natural versus artificial is a fundamental conceptual difference between the tradition of Judaism
and many of the Christian faith. The natural is not preferred over the artificial. On the contrary, a
verse that you’re all familiar with, Chapter 1, verse 28 in Genesis, “And God said to man, be fruitful
and multiply and fill the earth.” That’s about all everyone remembers of that verse. But there are
other words to that verse. “And master thy world.” That’s part of man’s obligation in this world, to
make the world a better place than God left it when He made man, even to the point that our
sages view circumcision as man’s self-perfection, that God left over a little bit for man even to feel
that he has to perfect himself.
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Therefore, the fact that something is artificial is not synonymous with bad. On the contrary,
artificial may mean man fulfilling his obligations to God.
V. Responsa Tzitz Eliezer-Vol. 15; 45:4:
[Cloning]…destroys and eradicates the G-dliness in humans…
VI. Talmud- Sanhedrin-65b:
Rava stated: If they wish, Tzadikkim [Rashi: who are free of sin] could create a world. Rava created
a man [Rashi: by using the book called Sefer Yetzirah that teaches how to combine the letters of
the Divine Name] and he sent it to Rabi Zeira. Rabi Zeira spoke with it and it did not respond. Rabi
Zeira then stated, "You are created by my colleague (see Maharsha ad. loc.), return to your dust,"
(i.e. die). Rav Chanina and Rav Oshiah would sit every Friday and study the Sefer Yetzirah and
create a calf that has reached a third of its potential development [this was considered a great
delicacy in the times of the Gemara] and subsequently eat it.
VII.
Maharsha ad loc:
Since [Rava] could not create a soul as indicated from the fact that this man could not
speak…[Rabi Zeira said that it should] return to dust
VIII. Responsa Chacham Tzvi- 93:
Murder only applies to those that are born from other humans, those that were once fetuses in the
womb of women… Therefore if Rabi Zeira thought that he could use this being as part of a minyan
he would not have returned him to the dust…
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IX. Talmud-Kiddushin-30b:
Our Rabbis taught: There are three partners in man, the Holy One, blessed be He, the father, and
the mother
X. Sidrei Tehora- Ohelos-5a:
…according to his [Chacham Tzvi’s] reasoning it should follow that there would have been no
prohibition against murdering Adam. This is something that is truly perplexing…
XI. Targum Yonasan-Genesis 30:21:
…and G-D listened to the prayers of Leah and He switched fetuses; He put Joseph into the womb of
Rachael and Dina into the womb of Leah…
XII.
Minchat Chinuch-189:1:
[In a situation where an androgynous male fathers a male child and the child has a sexual
relationship with the father’s female organs] it is doubtful as to whether he [the child] is
liable for having incest with his mother since he already has a mother…
XIII. Shaarei Torah Lerofim 259:
My father –in- law [Rav Elyshav] treated both the surrogate and genetic mothers as doubtful
mothers since there is no conclusive proof from the Talmud
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XIV. Chelkas Mechokake 1:8:
One must ponder the scenario of a woman that becomes impregnated through ambatia, has the
father fulfilled his obligation of peru u’rivu and is he considered the father concerning all legal
matters? I have found in the Maharil that Ben Sira was the son of Yirmiah from an ambatia…
XV.
Tzitz Eliezer-Vol. 15; 45:2
In my mind there is a very big difference between artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization… [
in the former situation the child is considered to have both a father and a mother while in the
latter scenario the child has neither]
XVI.
Rabbi Jachter’s Halacha Files-October 30, 2004:
The procedure of IVF, argues Rav Waldenberg, differs too much from natural reproduction for
Halacha to regard the man as the father. However, Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl (Sefer Assia 34:5) and
Rav J. David Bleich (ad loc. p. 239) disagree with Rav Waldenberg and believe that the man who
donates the sperm in the IVF procedure is considered the Halachic father even though fertilization
occurs outside the womb. Rav Gedalia Orenstein (Techumin 24:156-159) presents a most
convincing rebuttal of Rav Waldenburg's arguments.
Cloning, however, is different according to Rav Bleich. Rav Bleich argues (in the aforementioned
Tradition article) that a man who donates body material for cloning is not considered the Halachic
father, even if the clone was created from body material of both the husband and wife. Rav Bleich
asserts that a man is not defined as the father if he has not donated semen to produce the child.
Rav Bleich, though, notes that the Halacha might be different if the child is cloned from a sperm
cell.
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