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November 24, 2000/Heshvan 26, 5761, Vol. 53, No.9
Genetic engineering deemed kosher
RICHARD ALLEN GREENE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
LONDON - If 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.
The question might not have as wide an application as whether a tree that falls to a forest floor without anybody hearing it makes any noise, but the theoretical issue is making some waves.
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 at the first Chief Rabbi Jakobowits Memorial on Medical Ethics on Nov. 15.
In a wide-ranging lecture that also covered abortion, medical confidentiality, eugenics, genetic screening and genetic determinism versus free will, Steinberg emphasized that science and technology per se are morally neutral.
"The morally determining factor is their use," he said.
The Jewish approach, he said, is extreme caution in accepting innovations and changes.
Steinberg, who won the 1999 Israel Prize for medical ethics, is a pediatric neurologist at the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem and the author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Law.
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