Q&A: What Do You Think About the Experiment?
What Do You Think About the Experiment?
Question
What do you say about this experiment from an ethical-moral standpoint, and regarding the fear surrounding the issue?
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/682283
Answer
As a rule, I don’t think there is a problem with an experiment that does not cause suffering to people or animals. If we have ethical problems about how to relate to a creature created in it — that is a problem we will have to address on its own merits. When such a thing is created, we can try to formulate a position on whether it is a human being or not, and determine the proper attitude toward it accordingly. Certainly if this experiment saves human lives (by growing organs for transplant into their bodies).
Discussion on Answer
Following up on this question, today I came across another experiment that raises ethical questions:
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/609751
“A brain culture ‘came to life’ and began sending waves of human brain activity”
What do you think about this experiment?
If this develops into a human being, then apparently a soul has entered it, and if not — then what difference does it make that it sends brain waves? That is a physical process.
Maybe consciousness can also arise in a culture of brain cells, and the brain waves are a possible indication of the existence of consciousness.
Possibly. That is the first option I wrote about (development into a human being means not the body, but the emergence of consciousness).
Following up on this question, today I came across a Rashi that is relevant to this issue:
Leviticus 18:23
“And with any beast you shall not lie, to make yourself unclean with it; neither shall any woman stand before a beast to mate with it; it is perversion.” Rashi on Leviticus 18:23:
“It is perversion” — a term of holiness, sexual immorality, and adultery, as in “and My anger because of their perverseness” (Isaiah 10:25). Another explanation: “it is perversion” is a term of mixing and confusion — human seed and animal seed.
According to the end of Rashi, it seems that an experiment like this runs contrary to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. I also think there is some logic to the idea that this kind of mixing is improper. On the other hand, if this experiment has the potential to save lives or advance medicine, then apparently that overrides the issue of “perversion.”