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Bioethical Dilemmas:
J. David Bleich, world-renowned Jewish law & halachic authority presents a fascinating discussion of today's medical breakthroughs & Jewish law and ethics: the perplexing halachic questions that arise.
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Cloning
II. HUMAN INTERVENTION IN THE NATURAL ORDER
Faith communities that base their moral teaching upon natural law theory regard various forms of artificial procreation as immoral. The immorality of such acts lies not in their artificiality per se but in the fact that they thwart the natural character of transmission of human life. In its Thomistic formulation, the essence of natural law is a divinely ordained teleological system and the notion that divine wisdom, in guiding all creatures to their proper ends, imparts moral law to man through the medium of his intellect. As a rational creature, man’s intellect inclines him toward the actions and goals proper to his nature. Thus, according to natural law theorists, among other things, lying, gluttony, drunkenness and contraception are all immoral for essentially the same reason. Such acts are performed by a human faculty created for a readily discernible purpose. The evil in the immoral form of conduct described lies in the abuse of a natural faculty by its use in an unnatural manner.
These natural law theorists further assert that it is in the nature of man to transmit life through conjugal union. Use of body fluids or tissue for generation of life in some other manner, they contend, constitutes a subversion of man’s teleological function and purpose. They maintain that it is the conjugal act by which the spouses become one flesh, and only the conjugal act, that is designed for the purpose of generating human life. In effect, the phrase “. . . and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) is understood by these theorists as having a double meaning: (1) A man “shall cleave to his wife” in order that they “shall be one flesh,” i.e., that they may jointly produce a single flesh, namely, a child. Hence the announced telos of the conjugal act is procreation. (2) The generation of a child reflexively causes the parents themselves to become “one flesh.” Thus generation of new life has as its telos solidification of the marital bonds.22 Generation of a human life in some other manner and for some other purpose violates the divinely ordained telos for which the human body was created. On that analysis, homologous artificial fertilization is unacceptable because it separates the unitive and procreative aspects of propagation of the human species. Thus it has been stated that:
By comparison with the transmission of other forms of life in the universe, the transmission of human life has a special character of its own, which derives from the special nature of the human person. “The transmission of human life is entrusted by nature to a personal and conscious act and as such is subject to the all-holy laws of God: immutable and inviolable laws which must be recognized and observed. For this reason one cannot use means and follow methods which could be licit in the transmission of the life of plants and animals.”23
With regard to cloning specifically, the same source declares: . . . attempts or hypotheses for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through “twin fission,” cloning or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union.24
There is no reflection in Jewish tradition of a doctrine that establishes a global prohibition forbidding man to tamper with known or presumed teloi of creation. There are indeed individual thinkers who have explained the rationale underlying particular mitzvot in a manner echoing such a concept. Biblical commandments prohibiting interbreeding of species and the mingling of diverse agricultural species certainly lend themselves to such an interpretation. Although Rashi, in his commentary to Leviticus 19:19, regards those restrictions as chukkim, i.e., arational statutes not subject to human inquiry, Ramban, loc. cit., takes sharp issue with Rashi and opines that interbreeding and prohibited mingling of species are forbidden as constituting illicit tampering with creation. Ramban states that every creature and every plant is endowed by God with cosmically arranged distinctive features and qualities and is designed to reproduce itself so long as the universe endures. Crossbreeding and cross-fertilization produce a reconfiguration of those distinctive qualities and also compromise reproductive potential. By engaging in such activities man usurps the divine prerogative in producing a new species or entity with its own novel set of attributes and, presumably, less than optimally suited to fulfill the divinely ordained telos associated with the original species.
Ibn Ezra has been understood as presenting the matter in a somewhat different light. He has been understood as declaring that the Torah prohibits crossbreeding of species because the act thwarts propagation of the species and hence represents an injustice to the animals who are prevented from fulfilling the divine purpose of propagating their respective species,25 and as explaining the prohibitions against the mixture of agricultural species as well as against the combination of linen and wool in the cloth of a garment as violative of the natural order decreed by the Creator.26 R. Samson Raphael Hirsch had no difficulty in explaining the prohibition regarding sha’atnez (the mixing of linen and wool) in similar terms.
Indeed, R. Hirsch understood all chukkim as being reflective of the principle that man should not interfere with the order and harmony-and hence the telos-of creation.27 According to R. Hirsch, such laws are distinguished from mishpatim or so-called rational commandments only because our duties toward fellow men are more intelligible to us by virtue of our recognition of our own needs and aspirations. That particular purposes are similarly assigned to animals and even to inanimate objects is not immediately grasped by the human intellect and hence chukkim are depicted as arational. It is noteworthy that, although R. Hirsch regards these commandments as designed to prevent interference with divinely ordained teloi, unlike natural law theologians, he regards the teloi themselves as not being immediately available to human reason. That is certainly confirmed by the fact that no natural law philosopher has ever asserted that the manufacture of linsey-woolsey or even agricultural hybridization is intuitively perceived as violative of the divine plan for creation.
Were it to be assumed that tampering with the ostensive or presumed nature of animal species is always forbidden, most forms of genetic engineering would be illicit. No bacterium is designed by nature to clean up oil spills by metabolizing petroleum or to excrete human insulin for use by diabetics. In the absence of evidence in rabbinic sources to the contrary, it must be assumed that, even accepting Ramban’s explanation of the prohibition against interbreeding or R. Hirsch’s broader analysis of the rationale underlying chukkim in general, such strictures must be understood as limited to those matters explicitly prohibited.28
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