Humans didn’t invent cloning. God invented cloning, according to retired pediatrics professor Michael Thaler.
“It can’t be unnatural because after all, don’t you remember how God created man and woman? He took Adam’s rib…and cloned a woman. He took a piece of a rib and cloned a new human being…And so, God was the original cloner,” the physician said, flipping a small piece of chalk in his hand and warming to his subject.
“That’s how the whole thing started. So, you can’t very well argue that the process itself is unnatural. It’s absolutely natural…Rabbis have agreed with this premise.”
Thaler spoke on “Judaic Aspects of Cloning” earlier this month at Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa, as part of its seminar series titled “The Cutting Edge: Jewish Perspectives On Contemporary Life.”
A short, stocky man with gray hair, Thaler is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for Bioethics and professor emeritus of pediatrics at UCSF Medical Center.
According to halachah (Jewish law), Thaler said, Judaism looks at cloning from the point of view of preserving life. Cloning offers potential medical benefits, for example, such as organ renewal.
“An organ, like the heart, wears out, so now you can use the same person’s cells to build a new heart…That eliminates the rejection problems” generally associated with transplants, he said. “You can replace bad cells with good ones.”
By engineering cells, he added, cloning could eventually lead to cures for diseases such as cancer.
Referring to the Bible, Thaler noted that one of the basic tenets of Judaism is “to be fruitful and multiply.”
“If you can’t multiply the usual way, it can be done this way,” he said “The only thing needed is one cell and some manipulation.”
He asserts that the “primary consideration is that we not only do no harm with this new phenomenon, but that we must also do good…It must be beneficial and present the greatest good for the greatest number.”
As for the ethical aspects of cloning, Thaler asserts that as long as doctors are “doing God’s work,” they are acting ethically.
“As long as we are moving the world forward in a righteous manner we are acting in a halachically approved manner.”
Right now, the U.S. government isn’t funding research into cloning. But that doesn’t prohibit private funding, so the research continues.
What about the one question that seems to be on many people’s minds? Could Hitler’s evil be cloned?
His answer is a definite, “no.” Duplicating cells is one thing. Duplicating the memory that might go with them is an entirely different matter.
Cloning, Thaler said, is solely genetic duplication.
Mickey Schacht, a Shomrei Torah member in charge of adult education, said it was “very interesting to hear the Orthodox perspective on the subject of cloning, which seems to be `wait and see.’ I’d expected less flexibility.”