A baby was almost born with three parents, it was reported this week in China.
Scientists used the empty egg of one woman, filled it with the genetic material of a man and another woman, then transplanted the egg into the woman who provided the genetic material. The baby died prematurely.
Still, the procedure was a breakthrough in infertility treatments and one step closer to human cloning.
Genetics is moving ahead so quickly that the average person can barely keep up with it.
However exciting that process may be, it’s also incredibly dangerous.
As Edwin Black lays out in his new book, “War Against the Weak” (Page 40), the ideas of science can easily be applied to society in ways that lead to death and destruction.
The eugenics principles of racial purity that were nurtured in the United States and Britain led directly to Nazi genocide.
Hitler’s plan to create a master race with Germanic features wasn’t his alone — many highly regarded Americans were pushing similar ideas before the Nazis came to power.
While there was a public outcry against the forced sterilization and infanticide that took place in the United States against “unfit” citizens, the eugenics movement was able to proceed largely because of the authority invested in science.
It took the revelation of Nazi horror for eugenics to die. But science has only gained in prestige since then, and the potential for technology to be harnessed for a variety of moral agendas has increased as well.
Many think of science as the antithesis of religion. The ethical basis of spiritual practice, however, may be the best hope for keeping the pursuits of biotechnology and other disciplines responsible to the interests of society as a whole.
Consider the moral implications of some of the genetics breakthroughs that are presumably around the corner:
What if you could predetermine the gender of your child?
What if you could predetermine the color of its eyes?
What if you could clone your beloved dog Moishe if it were affordable?
If you knew early in a pregnancy that your child would be born with a disability, would you end its life?
In the time that it took you to ponder those troubling questions, science has probably made another major discovery without stopping to think about it. This week, scientists revealed that they have trained monkeys to play video games with their minds.
Some good news: Judaism has already taken some time to stop and think about it.
Locally, the International Conference on Jewish Medical Ethics has been exploring the moral complications of those issues for 11 years.
As Jews we are compelled to educate ourselves about our life challenges and question the assumptions we make about everything, including science. Read the stories about scientific discoveries even if they seem convoluted. Ask your friends and family in the medical and science professions what they are working on and what they think are the ethical consequences of their work.
That kind of vigilance can help prevent an unforeseen disaster in the name of science.
For a personal perspective on the perversions of eugenics, read this week’s bone-chilling j. cover story about Gershon Evan. As a youth in Vienna, Evan had his face measured by the Nazis for an analysis on the racial characteristics of Jews. A mold was taken of his head for some grotesque study.
Years later, as a survivor of the Nazi terror, Evan went back to Vienna as a guest of the Austrian government. The mold of his face also survived, staring back at him across the decades-past genocide and eugenics fervor.
Black’s research forces us to stare back with him, to confront once again the fact that it wasn’t just the Nazis who did horrible things. Americans did as well.
When you think about the fertility experiments in China, and monkeys with mind-control powers, allow the past to shed light on the present. This is how science can gain a spiritual conscience.