The nation's largest Orthodox Jewish organizations declared their support yesterday for allowing scientists to clone human embryos for medical research, breaking with conservative Christian groups on a topic of hot debate in the Senate.
The House passed legislation last year that would ban all human cloning, and the Senate may vote in April on an identical bill introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and backed by the Bush administration. The Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and many Christian political action groups -- including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition -- also support a ban.
However, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have introduced bills that would allow the cloning of embryos for stem cell research while prohibiting attempts to implant a cloned embryo in a woman's womb to produce a cloned baby.
That is the approach endorsed yesterday by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which represents nearly 1,000 synagogues, and the Rabbinical Council of America, which consists of more than 1,000 Orthodox rabbis. "We must be careful to distinguish between cloning for therapeutic purposes -- which ought to be pursued, and cloning for reproductive purposes -- which we oppose," the groups said in a joint statement.
Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union's director of public policy, said that he hopes the statement "will help people to understand that there is a religiously informed, moral basis for supporting this research that is at least as strong as the religiously informed, moral basis for opposing it."
Edward Reichman, an Orthodox rabbi and physician at New York's Einstein College of Medicine, said the Jewish position is that a "fertilized embryo in a petri dish does not have the status of human life," and if such an embryo can be used to cure diseases and save lives, "that is something we would welcome with open arms."
Reichman added that Jewish law might also allow the cloning of a baby, but "it is not something we would recommend" for a variety of reasons, including the high chance of deformities and the question of parentage.
"If a woman clones herself, who is the legal father?" he asked. "We would be creating people of ambiguous lineage."
The dominant branches of American Judaism, the Reform and Conservative movements, have not yet adopted positions on cloning but appear likely to follow the Orthodox stand. A panel of Conservative rabbis may vote as early as today on a draft policy supporting "therapeutic cloning," according to its author, Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff.
The Reform movement is on record in favor of fetal tissue and stem cell research, and "the mood of the movement is to support therapeutic cloning as well," said Rabbi Richard Address, director of the Department of Jewish Family Concerns in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
The cloning debate is closely related to research on stem cells – primitive cells that scientists say could treat a host of diseases. Last year, President Bush decided to support federal funding of stem cell research, but only if the cells are grown from existing lines, not from newly created embryos. Therapeutic cloning involves growing embryos in laboratories and destroying them after a few days, when stem cells are removed.
Muslim groups, Mormons and some mainline Protestant denominations, including the United Chuch of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA), have supported stem cell research. But Orthodox Jews are among the first religious groups to endorse therapeutic cloning.
Opponents of the procedure argue that it involves the destruction of life and, in the words of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, beckons scientists to "take on the role of God and reduce humans to mere spare parts." Adin Steinsaltz, an Israeli rabbi and renowned Talmudic scholar, said Jews generally reject the notion that human beings should not "interfere with the handiwork of God."
"We believe that mankind is given not only the permission but the admonition to make the world better," he said.