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process, we can use technology for human benefit. By giving broad scope to personal autonomy and allowing as much choice as is safe and effective, genes, through therapy and enhancement, will become instruments of personal growth. With the ever greater human freedom to control our future genetic destiny, progressive Judaism ought to wholeheartedly embrace the possibilities of our biological future.

Notes

I. Immanuel Jakobovits , Jewish Medical Ethics: A Comparative and Historical Study of the Jewish Religious Attitude to Medicine and Its Practice(New York , Bloch, 1975), p. 266

2. Genesis 11:1-9. Various interpretations are provided in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, W. Gunther Plaut (ed.) New York , UAHC Press, 1981), pp. 83-84. The author of Proverbs(16:18) reminds us:“Pride leads to destruction...”

3. The scientific issues for somatic cell gene therapy are summarized in LeRoy Walters and Julie Gage Palmer, The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy(New York , 1997), pp. 17-36

4. Scientific and technical background for germline therapy and its obstacles are provided in David B. Resnik, Holly B. Steinkraus, Pamela J. Langer, Human Germline Gene Therapy: Scientific, Moral and Political Issues(Austin , 1999, pp. 46-84 and Walters and Palmer, The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy, pp. 60-76.

Resnik, Steinkraus, Langer, Human Germline Gene Therapy, p. 95.

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6. Genesis 2:17

~J

Psalm 115:16

8. Rabbi Barry Freundel,“Judaism ” in On the New Frontiers of Genetics and Religion, J. Robert Nelson (ed.)(Grand Rapids ) 1994), p. 133.

9. Exodus 21:19

10. B. Baba Kamma 85a