This Week
For Openers
Genetic Engineering: It's Kosher
London
f a carp is genetically engineered so that it has no scales, is
it still kosher? After all, fins and scales are what make a fish
kosher in the first place.
Abraham Steinberg, a leading Jewish medical ethicist,
says the scale-less carp would still be kosher.
Steinberg argues that altering a carp's genes so that it does not
have scales does not change anything fundamental about the
fish.
Since we know carp is kosher, he said, it doesn't matter
whether it actually has scales.
The carp example was part of Steinberg's larger point that
Judaism does not forbid genetic engineering, an argument he
made Nov. 15 at the first Chief Rabbi Jakobowits Memorial
Lecture on Medical Ethics.
Genetic engineering that does not violate Jewish law is per-
mitted to improve products for profit and for medical purposes,
he concluded.
Steinberg, who won the 1999 Israel Prize for medical ethics, is
a pediatric neurologist at the Shaare Zedek Ho'spital in Jerusalem
and the author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Law.
He quoted the midrash, based on the creation story in Genesis,
that God left the world incomplete for man to complete.
There is a "duty to continue what God has started," Steinberg
said, which includes battling Jewish genetic diseases, such as Tay-
Sachs, via gene therapy.
But, he said, there are restrictions on allowable genetic engi-
neering.
"The actual act must not involve any inherent halachic prohi-
bition, such as mixing species, and must lead to no unavoidable
or irreversible result which is halachically prohibited," he said,
referring to Jewish law.
Hence, artificial insemination of a woman by a donor other
than her husband is not allowed because the child would be a
mamzer, the product of adultery, Steinberg said.
A third qualification is that the benefit of the act should out-
weigh the detriment, he said.
"The genetic revolution is technical, not fundamental,"
Steinberg said. "It is revealing existing material, not creating new
material."
In fact, he said, "Studying genetics is not only not a way of
playing God, but a way of strengthening belief in God." ❑
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(idiomatic) once in a blue moon
(idioMatic, sarcastic) already
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concern to all of us."
— Bloomfield Hills' Howard Rosenberg, who with his
wife Brenda are Ohr Somayach Detroit's 2000 Tree of
Life Award winners.
"To be his friend was to be granted one of the great
privileges of life."
— Rabbi Irwin Groner, in eulogizing the late U.S.
Ambassador to Norway David B. Hermelin at
Congregation Shaarey Zedek.
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12/1
2000
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