"There is nothing in cloning that stands against an explicit halachic law"
There are no less than four halachic answers to the question of what is the mother in vitro fertilization. This is just one example of the difficulty of the Halacha to deal with the challenge posed by the innovations of biotechnology. A member of the Higher Helsinki Committee Rabbi Yigal Shafran tries to provide answers
Tamara Traubman
In recent years Rabbi Yigal Shafaran has done a lot of work. Almost every day, scientists working in biotechnology report on new developments, and a rabbi and doctor of bioethics has to deal with a growing number of disturbing questions, which pose a challenge to the laws of Halacha.
Scientists are currently developing in their laboratories genetically modified goats that carry human genes, perfecting the technology of cloning (genetic duplication) and striving to find out which diseases the newborn will suffer from even before he is born. The scientific and technological development creates a new reality, changes ways of thinking and brings up possibilities that until a few years ago, and certainly during the times when the Gemara and "Shulchan Aruch" were written, no one thought of. The Jewish law, which specifies how a person should conduct everything in his life, is now faced with difficult dilemmas for which the answer is not clear-cut.
Rabbi Dr. Yigal Shafran is not only knowledgeable in matters of halacha; he is also good at knowing the ethical arguments in the humanist-universal debate. He serves as a lecturer in bioethics at the Technion and the Hebrew University, a member of the Higher Helsinki Committee (responsible for granting approvals for research on humans) and head of the department of halachic medicine In the religious council in Jerusalem, he does not meet the stereotype accepted in secular society of a religious person turning his back to scientific developments ("The desire of science is to benefit the human race"), but he also expresses a religious-conservative worldview ("The plight of a woman who cannot give birth is the greatest mental plight that exists") Therefore, not surprisingly, he also supports cloning mankind.
One of the challenges to Halacha is posed by genetic research, which accelerated in the late XNUMXs with the start of the project to decipher the human genome. Meanwhile, several research groups began to claim that they had found genes that affect not only physiological traits, such as eye color, but also personality traits and behavior.
The garden of secularism
In the week in which the interview with Dr. Shafran took place, researchers reported for the who-knows-how-many time about another gene that is probably related to personality traits - the turner gene is a gene for violence. "If this is true," said Shafran, "it could create a big problem for us." Maimonides already spoke about a degree of free choice given to man and gives him responsibility for his actions.
These studies, he says, conflict "with the principle of free choice that man has, free choice is a basic condition for reward and punishment. I remember when the human genome project began and the ideas emerged that maybe not only physical tendencies but also spiritual tendencies are inherent in man, I wrote a letter to one of my friends, very, very I wrote to him about the fact that French scientists claim that a gene for rebellion has been discovered in a religious conception, that the anti-religious perception is Also a genetic tendency. I wrote to him: 'How is it that we come to punish people for being disobedient to the Torah and all?' It can't be, it's not possible' he didn't believe there was such a thing.
"These developments pose questions in the field of religion. There are answers to them, but you can't come and say it's just nonsense. The classic example is that we punish two violent people with the same punishment according to the laws of the Torah, while It may be that one's tendencies to violence are greater by nature compared to his friend's tendencies, but we put them both in the same boat, in the same punishment, in the same class of punishments. This requires more the existing tendency in the law of the court, not to follow the dry law, but to investigate and examine the matter on its merits."
They claim that there is also a gene for homosexuality. If this turns out to be true, will you still regard homosexuality as an abomination?
"The Gemara discusses the fact that there are people who have a tendency toward homosexuality, but they emphasize that the tendency can be controlled, contrary to the modern view that it is an uncontrollable urge. This urge is not like the heterosexual sexual urge, which must reach an outlet at some point, because it is part of human nature. The homosexual urge is an urge that can be controlled. There is nothing bad in the religious concept that cannot be overcome."
According to Shaffern, free choice must be placed within its limits. "Free choice exists up to a certain limit. Put it down to a dog, which has a chain and can move around within the limits of the chain. But when it reaches the end of the chain, it stops. The same is the case with free choice. Man has free choice in the area of the chain."
After decoding the genes comes the stage of genetic engineering, and here the question of boundaries is absolutely critical. So far, a goat has been cloned into whose genome genes from a spider have been inserted, and from its milk, extremely strong fibers can be produced. Cows and sheep have also been cloned from whose milk raw materials for medicines can be extracted. The question is how many genetic changes can be made in an organism until it changes its essence and turns into something else. If, for example, they succeed in producing a ruminant pig through genetic engineering, will this pig be kosher?
The idea excites Dr. Shafaran. The counterargument he mobilizes is from the field of Jewish emotion and folklore, not Halacha. According to him, the predation of a pig is no different from that of a camel or a rabbit. But "the pig has become a symbol of denying the freedom of the Jews in their land. The Roman legion that conquered the Land of Israel, its symbol was the wild boar, and from this arose the whole ethos of the rejection of the boar."
And if we turn a less problematic animal, a camel for example, into a hooves. Will he be kosher?
"If there is such a thing, it is certainly possible that the animal will be kosher."
Duplicate and multiply
Since the second century AD, it has been customary in Judaism that if the mother is Jewish, the newborn is also Jewish. This halachic rule was preserved for many years and remained relevant even after the introduction of a new technology in the seventies, which fundamentally changed the possibilities of bringing children into the world: in vitro fertilization. However, in recent years things have gotten complicated. Women who had no eggs started using donor eggs. The reality became even more complicated about two years ago, when Israeli doctors began importing fertilized eggs from women from Romania, and then a problem arose that preoccupies many Jews: is the newborn Jewish.
Who is the mother - the woman who gave birth to the baby or perhaps the woman from whom the egg was taken?
"The answer depends on four different halachic methods, the divisions between them," says Shafran. According to one method, the mother owns the egg, and hence if it is the egg of a non-Jewish woman, the child is not Jewish. Dr. Shafran says that the senior halachic judges Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and the late Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach previously issued a halachic ruling stating that in the case of egg donation, the child will be attributed to the donor.
But despite the rabbinical training, this is not the most accepted method. A more accepted method is the one according to which the child belongs to the mother, and therefore will be Jewish. According to a third method, the child has two mothers and each of them has a status in relation to certain laws. A fourth method holds that the child does not have a mother, since each displaced a function of her friend. According to this method, there is no problem with taking a full-Jewish egg, "but we don't like the situation of a child without a mother," says Shafran. He himself completely denies the import of the eggs from Romania precisely for humanistic reasons. This is about the exploitation of women in distress, he says.
The controversy surrounding egg donation is a clear example of the difficulty of Halacha to keep up with the pace of changes caused by research by scientists and doctors. In the end, an ultra-Orthodox woman interested in egg donation will go to her rabbi and do as he rules. However, in a religion where we are used to receiving unequivocal answers about every detail of everyday life, even which shoe should be laced first, this reflects a difficult dilemma.
Having children is so important according to the halachic perception - Shaferan considers barrenness to be a woman's greatest predicament - that even cloning according to his opinion is a perfectly legitimate way to bring children into the world. Cloning has so far only been applied to animals. In cloning, you take a cell from the body of the animal you want to clone and insert its nucleus (which contains almost all the genetic material) into an egg whose nucleus has been removed. A weak electric current passes between the two, and at this point the egg begins to reproduce as if it had been fertilized by a sperm. The resulting offspring will be a genetic copy of the animal that donated the cell.
Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned using this method. Dolly's cloning is intended for the purpose of duplicating farm animals with selected traits for agricultural purposes. All the other animals that were cloned after her - goats, cows and pigs - were also cloned for the same purpose: to reproduce animals with a unique genetic load. (Goats have been cloned and engineered so that their milk contains drugs, pigs have been cloned so that their organs are suitable for transplantation into humans).
However, concepts such as Dr. Shaffern divert cloning to a completely different need: instead of a method of replication, he refers to it as a method of reproduction. Turning cloning into a method of reproduction entails many problems. To name a few of them: the cloned newborn will grow In the shadow of the "origin" in which he was created, and in the shadow of the inevitable expectations that the environment will burden him with, there will also be a lot of confusion within the family: the father will be Also "twin brother", the grandfather will actually be the "father".
For these reasons, many countries are passing laws today that will completely prohibit human cloning. In Israel, on the other hand, the approach of the law that matches Dr. Shafran's approach holds that there is no fundamental problem with cloning, but that the technology is not yet sophisticated enough. The solution found: Israeli law imposes a five-year moratorium on cloning, which will end in 2004.
"We must believe in science and know that science and scientists are people who have a desire to do good. In my view, cloning is part of science's desire to do good to the human race. Although cloning is not the number one solution. The perception in Halacha is that God wanted children to be born from a husband and wife who love each other, this is how he explains it The book of education, which is a halakhic book, is not a solution for those who are stuck, so it will be possible to use it in genetic replication.
And if indeed genetic replication is on the agenda at some point as an aid to people who have no other alternative, I will welcome it."
But not now?
"For me, cloning involves so many problems that I don't want to be the one calling for it. But I want to be the one calling for science to try to reach a time when genetic cloning will be on the shelf for those couples for whom every other alternative has failed. Cloning is more of a problem with human arrogance, which is needed To Eden, that a person should not think that he is God, than there is some concrete problem with this action that conflicts with the laws of the Torah. There is nothing In a clone that stands against some kind of explicit halachic law."
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