Religion - Embryo Research
Recent research suggests that human embryos may be an ideal source of
"stem cells," which can be grown into replacement tissues for
transplantation into people with chronic diseases, whose own cells are
dying. Scientists want to collect these cells from embryos that are to
be discarded by fertility clinics.
Since 1995, however,
Congress has banned the use of federal funds for research in which human
embryos are destroyed. This ban has so far precluded the vast majority
of academic scientists from pursuing human stem cell research.
Now that may change.
In a report to be released this month, the presidentially appointed
National Bioethics Advisory Commission will recommend that Congress ease
its embryo research ban to allow federally funded stem cell researchers
to destroy human embryos donated by parents who have completed their
fertility treatments.
The ethics commission
held a one-day workshop at Georgetown University last month to hear
religious leaders' opinions about the morality of such research. The
speakers did not officially represent their denominations, but their
personal comments offer insights into how some of the world's religions
are responding to the prospect of human embryo research. Excerpts [of
the Jewish view] follow:
--Rick Weiss
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff,
rector and professor of philosophy, University of Judaism, Bel Air,
Calif.:
The Jewish tradition
accepts both natural and artificial means to overcome illness.
Physicians are the agents and partners of God in the ongoing act of
healing . . . . We have a duty to God to develop and use any therapies
that can aid us in taking care of our bodies, which ultimately belong to
God. [But] we are not God. We are not omniscient, as God is, and so we
must take whatever precautions we can to ensure that our actions do not
harm ourselves or our world in the very effort to improve them. A
certain epistemological humility, in other words, must pervade whatever
we do, especially when we are pushing the scientific envelope, as we are
in stem cell research. We are, as Genesis says, supposed to work the
world and preserve it; it is that balance that is our divine duty.
Genetic materials
outside the uterus have no legal status in Jewish law, for they are not
even a part of a human being until implanted in a woman's womb and even
then, during the first 40 days of gestation, their status is "as if they
were simply water." As a result, frozen embryos may be discarded or used
for reasonable purposes, and so may stem cells procured from them.
Source:
Washington Post, (June 13,
1999)
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