The World's Aaron Schachter concludes our stem cell series by examining how the Judaic duty to care for the sick trumps ethical concerns over the rights of embryos created in the laboratory.
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When Rabbi Yaakov Weiner looks for guidance on the morality about embryonic stem cell research, he turns to the same place he usually goes for answers.
Rabbi Yaakov Weiner: "From the Bible, the first book of Genesis."
Weiner heads the Jerusalem Center for Research in Medicine and Halacha, or Jewish law. He points to one relevant biblical passage.
Rabbi Weiner: "Now, Genesis 9, verse 6, goes like this." (reads in Hebrew)
Most modern Bibles translate this verse as a prohibition against murder. But Orthodox Jewish tradition interprets it specifically as a prohibition against abortion. Weiner translates the passage as follows: If someone spills the blood of a human, when this human is within another human, he gets capital punishment. So, aborting a fetus violates Jewish law, or Halacha. But if an embryo is created outside the womb, that's another matter.
Rabbi Weiner: "The embryos, which are in the Petri dish, according to Halacha, have no halachic status and I can either throw them away or I can use them for medical research."
In fact, Weiner says, using embryonic stem cells for medical research is not just acceptable, it's encouraged. A Jewish principle called "pikuach nefesh" mandates that people do all they can to save human life, and that includes medical research that could one day lead to cures for disease. Weiner's decision, along with similar findings of other rabbis, and Muslim clerics, paved the way for Israel's acceptance of embryonic stem cell research.
But it's not as if there was no debate. Professor Shraga Blazer of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa chaired a committee that helped to create Israel's regulations. He says the original discussions in the 1990's were "intense" but not vitriolic, as in the United States. That's partly because of the religious pronouncement, but also, Blazer says, because doctors promised to police themselves to avoid ethical pitfalls.
Blazer: "We explained to politicians that the future treatment will be consisted on the use of embryonic stem cells. And the benefit is much, much beyond the fear of the slippery slope."
Israeli scientists agreed to impose limits on themselves. They can't make embryos solely for stem cell research. They can't clone embryos for the purpose of creating a human being. And if they want to do stem cell research they have to go before a committee to get permission. Karl Skorecki, a medical researcher at Israeli University Technion, says scientists are also prohibited from paying women for their eggs to create stem cells.
Skorecki: "People have thought 'well, wait a minute, we can actually create an industry here.' That is against the law, it's against halachic principles, it's against ethical principals because it potentially endangers the health of women for purposes that are in the interest of either research or the economy."
Skorecki says the fact that Israel tackled these tricky issues nearly 8 years ago allowed the country to get a jump on the rest of the world in the field of stem cell research.
Skorecki: "If you look at published, peer-reviewed research, which in my opinion is the gold standard or currency of important research success, Israeli scientists appear in a much higher percentage than scientists from almost any other country, if not every other country."
Israeli researchers have pioneered the creation of a stem-cell-based biological pacemaker that could one day replace electronic pacemakers. They've also led the field in research to regenerate livers using stem cells. And scientists at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem have learned how to turn embryonic stem cells into brain cells.
The doctors hope one day those cells could help reverse the effects of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. In addition to government-funded research at Israeli universities, more than half a dozen private companies do research of their own, and are also regulated by Israeli law, and guided by the Bible.
