CRISPR Technology: A Jewish Legal Perspective

Overview

Journal Rambam Maimonides Med J

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2022 Nov 17

PMID 36394501

Authors

John D Loike

Rabbi Tzvi Flaum

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) gene editing is an innovative and potentially game-changing biotechnology that can potentially reverse DNA mutations in a tissue-specific manner. In addition, CRISPR is being targeted for xenotransplantation, for increasing human longevity, in animal breeding, and in plant science. However, there are many ethical challenges that emerge from CRISPR technology. This article discusses several positions that relate to these ethical challenges from a Jewish legal perspective. In addition, we present several other applications of CRISPR technology that lack a defined Jewish legal precedent and require rabbinical scholars to address and resolve them in the future.

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