CELLULAR DIVISION

Laurie Zoloth, chair of the Jewish studies department at San Francisco State University in California

Confronted with the dramatic new science of genetics, religious ethicists have responded with serious reflection on these new challenges to established moral understandings. Stem cell research raises urgent questions about the permissibility, the telos, the moral meaning, and the appropriate limits of remarkable advances in biotechnology and genetic medical interventions that fundamentally change our basic understanding of what it means to be human in a mutable natural world. For the Jewish ethical-legal tradition, (halachah) which functions methodologically as a discursive community, in which the justification is created by the force of moral suasion, no single authoritative voice, nor one particular council of authority, speaks for the entire tradition or the community. Jewish reasoning begins by exploring cases in the Biblical and Talmudic texts and is a series of open-ended arguments intended to include the broad and creative use of history, text, and culture, with many interrupting voices representing competing narratives. However, Jewish thinkers widely agree that the two critical components in our response are duty and healing, and that the struggle to define the moral status of the embryo, so much a concern for Christian thinkers, is not a central question for a Jewish response to stem cell research. Jewish tradition is duty-based. A commanded life begins with the necessity to respond to the needs of the other, rather than in a rights-based response. Central duties include the work of healing and the task of repair and completion of a broken world. The first responses to hES/EG cell research have been positive because it promises breakthrough medical therapy for life-threatening conditions. This general response is based on the clear mandate in Jewish texts to save life whenever possible, even if the saving of life requires the violation or suspension of other commanded acts. To save even one life, the halachah states, it is permissible, and in fact it is mandated, that all other mitzvoth can be abrogated (except for the case of the prohibitions against murder, adultery, and idolatry). Jewish medical ethics is nearly entirely constructed around the principle of pikuach nefesh, to save a human life.

While moral status of the embryonic tissue is the threshold question for many religious traditions, the Jewish position is that this is of secondary importance to the question of the life-saving consequences of this technology. Like nearly all discourse in this field, Jewish understanding of moral status derives from the abortion debate, in which the embryo and fetus have a developmental status relative to their gestational age.

It is strongly argued throughout the long history of debate about abortion that the very early embryo is not the moral or physical equivalent to a human person. Central to the understanding of embryology in the Talmud and subsequent halachic responsa is that prior to the 40th day after conception, the developing fetus is to be considered "like water." The fetus is further marked in its development by quickening, and the external visual changes in a woman's body that also warrant differing social responses and a different consideration of the pregnancy, but the fetus is a human being when it is born and can live as a separate entity outside the womb.

Hence it is not "murder" when the 100-cell blastocyst, created by artificial, non-coital, extracoporeal means is destroyed to recover the inner cellular mass that will be stem cells. Rather, it is the life that if it could be saved by stem cells, must be saved that is of concern. Hence, if the full use of repair, patching, transfusion, and replacement of damaged tissue were possible for this tissue, millions of persons might be afforded years of productive life. Since the task of healing in Judaism is not only permitted, it is mandated-if stem cells can save a life, then not only can they be used, they must be used. This is supported and directed not only in early biblical passages ("you shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor," and "you shall surely return what is lost to [your neighbor]," etc.), but in numerous rabbinic texts as well.

Finally, central to Jewish texts is the recognition of the as yet unredeemed quality of the world--even the natural world. Just as circumcision is one mark of the covenant, one mark of a human response to birth and a refinement of the natural world, so too is the notion that advanced scientific inquiry is a part of tikkun olam, the mandate to be an active partner in the world's repair and perfection. In the world of suffering and injustice, all research can be understood as an opportunity to address injustice. This justice consideration is made actual by a support for science, medical advance, and the freedom of inquiry, all ways that human work to perfect the world, and activity to be fully embraced. While texts warn of the possibility of hubris, the struggle to understand and to interpret the covenental relationship includes extending the duty to heal.

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