Genetic engineering is only permissible by Jewish law when it is used to preserve life, and it should not be used in pursuit of specific personality and physical traits, Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe, Chabad's scholar-in-residence from Harvard University, said during a talk in Kemeny Hall on Tuesday.
"Jewish law would frown on cosmetic designer babies but would encourage us to do everything we can to save a potential future child from a disease that actually poses a danger to them," he said.
Although the Torah was written many centuries before genetic engineering technology was developed, Yaffe said it can still be used to address modern questions. Both the Torah and the Talmud a compilation of Jewish laws are "conceptual" and thus their specific teachings can apply to broader concepts, he said.
"I believe very strongly that if you look carefully at the way the Talmud deals with these issues, [it] basically says if you can think about it, if you can imagine it, if you can envision it, it's probably going to happen, so let's deal with it, or at least think about dealing with it," Yaffe said.
Despite the technical differences, genetic engineering which Yaffe defined as "creating alterations within the genome rather than through selective breeding that create different outcomes in terms of the expression of said genome" is treated the same way under Jewish law as other forms of genetic manipulation, including cloning and stem cell research, according to Yaffe.
Yaffe, who has not received formal scientific training, said the increasing accessibility of science concepts in the past few decades allowed him to develop a general understanding of genetic engineering.
"Someone who devotes the time and the effort and has a reasonable background in learning things, in scholarship, should be able to acquire a basic knowledge of what's going on," he said. "That's my excuse for standing here in front of you and discussing scientific matters."
Although Leviticus 19:19, a portion of the Torah, states, "You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your animal mate with a different species," most authorities conclude that this law does not completely preclude genetic engineering, Yaffe said. Because God created an unfinished, imperfect world, humans are permitted to improve it, he said.
Yaffe criticized efforts to engineer children with seemingly desirable qualities because scientists do not understand the full consequences of manipulating individual genes. Pursuing several specific genes can lead to different, unintended results, he said.
"For example, there seems to be a positive relationship between high IQ and bipolar disorder and certain other mental disorders," he said.
By selecting seemingly-perfect traits for a child, "you may have created someone who is the perfect mass murderer who will never ever be caught," Yaffe said.
Jewish law forbids endangering a person's life if death can be avoided, according to Yaffe. This focus on the preservation of life requires genetic engineering to be used only in cases in which it is obvious that an unborn baby will develop a disease, he said.
"Because of the primacy of saving life, we would solve the problem now and worry about other problems later. Saving a life allows us to ignore unknowns," he said.
Yaffe predicted that his interpretation of Jewish law with regard to genetic engineering will remain relevant in the future.
"I believe the time will come when we will understand precisely what all the [genes] do," he said. "At that point, we will be able to know what the trade-offs are. However, even after we get to that point in history, we'll have some issues."
Genetic engineering may devalue the natural process of humans born with unique characteristics, deny the value of each human and result in the loss of talent, he said.
