CRISPR, Gene Therapy & Modification/Selection of Embryos | Rabbi Anthony Manning | October 22nd 2025

So we'll have to have a little bit of a a shortened share. Let me first thank our sponsors. The entire academic year is sponsored branded and Zelik Ben Calman which we're very grateful for. Uh thank you for that sponsorship. So if I could just ask you to turn off your phones that would be great. Now I promised you some shirim on medical issues. I also like to give Shirim at this time of year which are connected a little bit with braces. They're exciting paras to some really interesting sources. So I'm combining those two things and today we'll have to have a little bit of a like a but as you were in you're still doing a mitzvah even if it's not awesome in Torah but in this case but it's still let's say maka mitzvah inra but um what I'd like to do today is look a little bit at crisper which is gene uh editing and therapy and changing the genetic code of a newborn child to produce one with without the negative, if you like, features that we're worried about genetically or maybe to enhance positive features. We'll see what that means. Next week and the week after, I'd like to do a two-part series which we've never addressed before on an issue which is very contemporary which a few people have spoken about in outline which is the issue of theostumous retrieval of sperm from uh men soldiers in order to produce babies for grandchildren uh for for grandparents etc etc. This is an absolutely fascinating area. Um, Ravashi Dig spoke about this in outline at the Tur Shalim. I'm not sure if you were there. Unfortunately, you only have 45 minutes less, about 35 minutes. We're going to dedicate 2 hours to it and we're really going to do it well. There's Ratashm next week and the week after. As I say, it brings up loads and loads of fascinating issues, each of which is a shar of themselves, but we'll give that an an overview. Uh, but some of the sharim the sources already today will help us there. So let's talk a little bit about this topic. I'm not going to go through as many sources inside so that we can cover an overview in 35 minutes. Uh gene therapy is a is now a very common way of treating different diseases. They can change the genetic uh coding and deliver that uh new coding into either sematically uh into a particular organ and I brought you a little picture on the front page. uh they can deliver DNA material through viruses is one way to do it into people's lungs, bloodstream, muscles, liver and and deal with problems, diseases in those organs. That is relatively uncontroversial because if it helps, it helps. You don't pass that on to anybody else when you even if you get pregnant or produce children. Um so there's really no ongoing downside to that. And if it if it's a good treatment, it's a good treatment. However, we can also do what's called gourine gene therapy, which is where they actually take an early stage an OM or a sperm uh in or or an early development uh of of a of an embryo and they can ch either change the genetic material through various different ways. There is something called crisper which stands for clustered regularly interspaced panroic repeats. I'm not entirely sure what any of those words mean on their own. I think I know what the word regularly means. Um but uh there is something called crisper through which we actually can snip out the DNA which is a problem and reinsert new DNA fixed DNA into the the genome there and and uh one of the the the uh the um if you like uh influences on this new treatment was bacteria themselves. Sometimes bacteria can actually swallow up viruses that attack them, take DNA from those viruses, insert it into their own DNA, so the next time the virus comes to attack them, they have the necessary code in order to deal with that virus. That is something that happens uh naturally in nature. So uh scientists said okay, we can copy that, we can mirror that and we can use that system of clipping and pasting, cutting and pasting DNA in. Now, of course, if you do that with a with a developing fetus, you're going to change the entire DNA makeup for that fetus and therefore that new DNA becomes part of them. It will be passed onto their to their progeny. Uh, and if you create a monster, then you've caused a problem as it were. You know, create a monster in in parenthesis in in quotes. And we'll see how we how we deal with this. There are various different issues. And I brought you on page number two um a list of those issues. Uh they fall into three basic categories. Uh number one, at what point is it therapy and and treating people and at what point is it enhancing people? Okay, where where are we going to draw in that line between therapy and enhancement? Number two, how safe are these uh procedures? How how nervous should we be? How lactically how open should we be to try new things like this? and also fairness concerns. Uh is this going to be open to the rich but not open to the poor? Are we going to create two species if you like a little bit like uh the uh HG Wells time machine where you've got the uh the species that controls and the species which are controlled? Um uh is that a problem going forward? And therefore I've I've brought some of those questions there on page two. Uh we can uh we've got to look at these together. Sorry could I just ask you just to be a bit quieter. Sorry. Thank you very much. Um, where are we going to draw the line between disease and therapy? Uh, obviously serious disease is obviously a problem. What about a higher risk of disease? Someone carries the BA gene and we're worried that those uh children when they eventually grow up are going to have a higher risk of uh of different kinds of cancers. Uh what if we're just uh you know avoiding below average height or above average weight? Is that a legitimate intervention? What if we're enhancing things such as intelligence or athletic ability or changing eye color, skin color, hair color, something more cosmetic? What if we're given super enhancements, uh, infrared vision, uh, high frequency hearing, uh, anti-aging genes? Are we going to be able to to do this and produce this kind of thing? And we're going to look at some of those issues, uh, and and where we draw the line between, if you like, playing God and intervening. Now, this is really the share where are we going to draw that line between interventionism on the one hand and we can't interfere with nature and create a quote unquote monster if you like and and do something that we're going to live to regret. So, I'm going to show you a few sources that balance those issues. And at the end of the day, we're going to have to have some uh some practical guidelines as to how to try and get this right. We will make some mistakes, but we'll have to try and get it right. Okay, let's let's have a look at a couple of metahalaki perspective. Let's start with page number three. >> Page one, >> page three. We are now looking at uh general questions of intervention which fall into three categories really. Uh either editing the genes like we've just been talking about cutting and pasting or uh pre-implantation genetic screening and then selection. Should we be looking at embryos? Even if we're not going to change the genetic material of the embryos, should we be checking which embryos? Should we be um fertilizing embryos, scanning them, screening them, seeing which ones have the problematic uh disease, and then discarding them? Is that a problem? Do we have an issue discarding those embryos? How do we make those choices? We're going to look at all of those issues. So, if you look, let's start with source number four. Again, we're going to have to be a bit more selective this this session about sources. This is a very important source um where if you like address this issue as occasionally present a debate between Ria the voice of Torah and Turis Rufus the Roman the voice of if you like secular western values what we would call them today based on Greco Roman ideas. How are we going to look at this? Says to Rufus, if God really loves the poor, why does he not give them any money? It's all very well you telling poor people, don't worry, God loves you. But if God loved you, you'd have you'd have a parasa. So says to him, we we are get save from by helping them because we can give them money. we can intervene and we get a mitzvah and they get he says to him no on the contrary you should be going to for that for helping these people I give you there was a king who was very angry with his servant and he put him in prison so don't give him drink don't give him water and along comes a And he gives him food and water against the king's instructions. When the king hears, he'll be insensed. And we are all called, you Jews are all called. All the world is a response to him. No. Let me give you in return. Let's say a king is angry with his own son, his own family. And he puts him in a prison. He says, "Don't give him drink and don't give him water, but he doesn't really mean it. Don't feed him." He just trying to teach him a lesson or or do something with it, but he's really his son. Someone gives him food and drink. Won't the king be happy with him? And we are the children of Hashem. And therefore, we're not dealing with servants here that God is punishing. And therefore, who are we to intervene in, you know, God's eternal plan? If God wants to make you rich, he'll make you rich. If God wants to make you well, he'll make you well. We're dealing with children, God's children. We're all siblings. We're all family. If we can do something to help you, that's what God wants us to do. We're meant to be, says Rabi, interventionist. In a parallel medish again with number five, it was an unknown co-tra fellow traveler traveling with them and a sick person came up to them who he said to him. They said to the people, the rabbis, how can I be healed? Do you have any advice for me? So they said to him, I say, "Yes, we have advice." Rabbis can sometimes give medical advice as well if they know what they're talking about. Kane do this. So he says to them, "Who made me sick?" They said to him, "We didn't make you sick. Decided if you're going to be sick." So he says to them um therefore you have got involved in something that's none of your business. Bit rude but we'll see how they responded. He he he afflicted me and you're healing me. You're going against God. Are you not breaking God's plan? So they said they said said to him okay they said to him what do you do for a living tell me. So just like Adam was meant to be an o adama. By the way if you look carefully in parishes you see even before Adam the intention was he was going to be an oedama. It says there was no man yet there to work the land. So that was the already the plan even before the question is how successful is he going to be? So we're here to work the land. Look, I've got a sythe in my hand. I'm here. I'm just come out from the field. They said to him, "So who who created the vineyard?" Hashem did. They said to him, "So why are you getting involved in something which is not yours?" He created the vine and yet you think you can do better. You can water it. You can prune it. You can you can harvest it. If God wanted it to to be like that, he would have pruned it himself. Why are you getting involved? Don't you see that I'm a farmer? That's what I do. If I didn't go out and actually work the fields, nothing would grow. So then they turned around to him and they lost patience with him. The guy's obviously a bit of a nudnik. [snorts] So they said to him, "You're a complete world idiot." >> idiot. Okay. Okay. Fine. Did you not hear the idea in what is man is like grassy? Human beings are like vegetables in very different different ways. We grow from the ground. Okay. If even if you if you don't prune it, he won't grow. And if he grows, but you don't give it water. The whole thing will die. This is what your body is. The fertilizer is like the medication. The ish. And the farmer who is the farmer who are there a farmer is a land doctor we all do this our whole life is based on the idea that everything aes put in the world needs us to partner needs us to make it work it's fundamental everything is there for that partnership in potential so to number six philosopher said to him is so beautiful toe admiration. Why wasn't mankind born with a thinks that's so important? So says to him, no, every single thing that God made in the creation is there for us to perfect mustard, you know, sweet and sour. You know, sweet's nice and sour's nice, but if we can mix them, we can make it sweet and sour. I don't know if anything grows in nature sweet and sour, but we can make it that way. All these different things, different vegetables. Weed needs to be ground and even human beings, they need to be fixed up. Everybody needs to be fixed up. And therefore, we have this mission to partner with in the world. And therefore, in principle, we are interventionist. If this treatment is possible and God gave us the to do it, then we should do it. That's that's in in keeping with everything else that we see in the world. We used to be able to fix this disease by who knows a bit of medication. Now we can fix it by gene uh gene editing. So in theory should have a very positive idea and that's why the said we just read in number seven fill the land. What does it mean fill the land? fill the land and conquer the land and have ownership over and mastery over all the things that the fish says the what does he mean fill the land it doesn't mean have lots and lots of millions and billions of people says in number eight it's a beautiful fill it means it's a little it empty. You need to fill up every single thing in the world. It's waiting for you to just top it up. Mankind came at the end of creation even though he finds everything in front of him. All the grass and the grain and the fruit we can't benefit. It's very difficult to benefit from because we need it's like is pouring down on us pouring water and we're just drowning in it. We need something to catch it. We need to create the ka by definition. We have to create those receptacles to actually catch the is coming from heem and the is he gave us knowledge and understanding. We can therefore make these different schemes and ideas through this everything in nature is lacking. We have the brains to to to fix it. However, he says at the end look at the last nine after the ellipses. Okay, it's good for our physical material benefit to do this. Nevertheless, there's a downside. It helps us gain the and make money and become healthy, but there's a downside. What's the downside? It can, well, I didn't give you the whole quote, but he goes on to say, it can give us excess free time. He's talking in the mid-9th century. Can you imagine what he'd be thinking in the 21st century? It can give us too much free time. He says leads to boredom, idleness, time wasting and looking out, you know, the devil makes work for idle hands and all that. It can it can rapidly increase our money. I mean, he's in the industrial revolution, so he knows what he's talking about there. Um, and we can become materialistic, uh, you know, pleasure seeking, etc. Therefore, there's a downside. Everything which has an upside has a downside, and we have to look at how we're going to balance that. Also there is an idea that we don't run the world runs the world. Look at this very famous uh three or four lines from says to became deathly ill his brother-in-law came to him. Get your affairs in order. You will die and you will not live. says the the Gomorrah. What does he say twice? You'll die and you won't live. You've lost this sword. You've lost the next sword. You're finished. Says to him, Michael, why? I'm the king. I'm doing my best. Said to him because you didn't try and have a family. So says to him, it's because I've seen through I've seen I'm going to have terrible children who's going to be a destructive force in Israel for decades. I don't want to have that kind of child. He says to him, why are you getting involved in the secrets of in the way God runs the world? You don't run the world. God runs the world. Whatever you've been commanded to do, you must do. [snorts] Let let God run the rest. So where do we turn around and say we don't get involved in kamayim and trying to second guessess what God wanted. If God wanted a species that looked like that, he would have made a species that looked like that. Why am I trying to say that the creation is not sufficiently uh uh complete without that? On the other hand, you could limit this and say, "No, this is talking about mitzvah, something we're commanded to do. We can't turn around and say, "I'm not going to do because I don't think it's going to turn out right." You got to do what you got to do and leave the rest to Hashem. But we're not really dealing with something you're commanded to do. We're commanded to heal people. And therefore, we are doing what we're commanded to. But we're also commanded to have and to understand that there's a reason that people are sick. There's a reason that there's tragedy and sadness in the world. Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and solve it but that doesn't mean we should think that it's all wrong and we need to fix everything. So how again how are we going to draw that line? So one important line is the line between healing and um an enhancement. We have an imperative to heal. We have the apost number 10 says if someone is sick then the doctor must heal and says the gar number 11 why does it say you must surely heal here we see that there's permission for the doctor to intervene and to heal people and rashi says god made him god who loves him god who loves him made him sick you mercy and he'll make him well we don't say that and adds not only do we not say that with man-made problems cuz rapo is if someone smacks him in the head we heal him. You might have thought yeah that's cuz someone smacks him in the head but if God god forbid gives him a terrible disease that was God's decision. No we don't even say that's why he says ra you repair we heal him through man-made problems you repair and we even heal him through heavenly scent problems. We do both. Therefore we have a general um mitzvah to intervene to heal. However, we have a few mitzvah that seem to go in the other direction. First of all, there's a ram number 12. I I'll summarize these briefly. Why do we have a mitzvah of kim? You can't mix certain things, certain grains, certain crossbreeded bread animals, certain grasses. Why? Why? And he says the reason is because made the species how they're meant to be. If you start crossbreeding species, first of all, you know, it's not a right thing to do because most species don't crossbreed. That should be already a wake-up call. You can't cross a monkey in a line. It doesn't work. There's a reason it doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is God doesn't want you to do it. So if you find a way to crossbreed in a way which is like ah you make it work. You should have realized you were not meant to do that. You're saying that the creation does not have enough species in it. I have to make more species. That's the reason that the spirit of the law for kilion says the same idea. On the other hand, my monades says no, that's not what kilime is teaching us. Kilim is teaching us certain aodoro rituals which were very prevalent. Maybe even basalav is something to do with a vodaro as well. Certain things are not meant to be mixed and they're part of a of a ritualistic approach which we pull away from and it's nothing to do with creating new species. But the ramban nevertheless says um this is an idea that we have which should be informing us. uh kishu. You may not have thought of kishu of magic, witchcraft. Why aren't we allowed to do witchcraft? In case any of you were thinking of uh going into that for a living, I joke, but my wife when she lived in England, her boss, actually the head of HR in her firm was a white witch. Was a wiccan witch. Okay. [snorts] So, and she took it very very seriously. So, that was 30 years ago. Who knows what people are now? Number 15. The Indian says why are we allowed to work witchcraft? I think it's because of the following. God made everything with its natural nature which is natural force. It does what it does how God created it. It works. The world was ced, the universe was created so precisely, so beautifully, so calibrated that it works perfectly. God created it. And everything has to do its thing. You want to now mix everything up. You're not allowed to cross that line. You're using black magic to do things that naturally don't occur. and God knows this will only be bad for you. So it could be that that's part of it as well. On the other hand, my says, "No, that's not the reason why witchcraft is prohibited. Witchcraft is prohibited because it's stupid. because it's idiotic. Because it's the way that people convince gullible masses that they're able to do things, which is all smoke and mirrors. And you as a Jew, the worst possible thing you can do is be a fool and be taken in by all of the nonsense that drives the world, which we see in every generation, people are driven without thinking. So maybe it's got nothing to do with Tyrous in this sense. Even if it does, we have on the other side. There's always the one side of the other side. Number 16. But if I'm genuinely healing someone, I'm not worried so much about the uh the witchcraft and black arts and black magic because it's rafu. I'm not doing it to try and create Frankenstein. I'm doing it to try and avoid Frankenstein, to try and heal people, to try and uh give people refuris. And therefore, maybe I have even more leeway, [clears throat] which is interesting. And by the way, if you ask shilas where people all sorts of faith healing techniques, slightly strange things, healing hands and and and there are people who really swear by them and there are people who who they really help and is it placebo? Is it real? Do people have powers? If you ask shilas where people are genuinely sick, they usually told it's it's fine. If if this works, it's not a vodaora. If it works, then do it. >> If you believe it, it >> okay, that also that also could be. Um then we have this beautiful mahocus about the safer. I just want to show you this because it is it is a gem. Look on the top of page six. We've never actually looked at this before I don't think it is. So back to him again. It says about him. So he did six things. Three of them the rabbi said good for you. On three of them they said no that was the wrong thing to do. I'm not going to go through all six. One of them is Ganso Ghana sorry Ghana safer for us he hid the book of healing the hyala and they said that was good he put away a book of healing and he hid it so people couldn't use it so what is this book of healing so Rashi says number 18 meaning people would get sick but it wouldn't bother They wouldn't do chuva. They wouldn't be, you know, why am I sick? They'd just go to the safer. They'd abc better now. Take a take a pill. Take take take an aball. Pain's gone away. And Rash said he hid it because he didn't want people to just be able to heal themselves so quickly that they didn't internalize the spiritual message of the healing. Interesting. the Rambam my monities who of course was a doctor goes ballistic when he hears this he doesn't know that Rashi said it I don't even know if he knows who Rashi was interesting because obviously Rashi didn't know who the Rambam was because the Rambam lived 100 years later but did Rambam ever know that there was this man 100 years before in northern France called Schlommo Benitak who was a great rabbi maybe we don't know he doesn't ever refer to him it could well be that like in northern Africa the way they viewed the Ashkanazin was a bit like you know the hill people of Timbuktu you know this a strange minority weird group living in the middle of the cold freezing lands of England and France. So, so uh the Rambam when he talks about this in 19 says what is it there were various healing practices in this book but and it was it was problematic you shouldn't be using that it was talismanic it was magical you do this magic trick in a certain a certain way. It helps with this trick. It crosses a certain line. Of course, they hid it away because people were doing when people were getting into this kind of magic. Uh they hid it away. Not the way to be. Or maybe alternative. It was a book which had a lot of very dangerous toxic drugs in it. Which are very very damaging sampology coming up and you mix it in a certain way and you put a certain amount of liquid in and it causes this disease or it solves this disease. We all know that a lot of healing mechanisms, therapies, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, sick people can get better from them and well people can get sick from them. We know that when a good doctor knows a certain disease and if he puts this particular powder and water, okay, you can save him. Okay. But then the level of medicine went down. your hurricane book and the people would kill. The doctors were killing more people than they were healing. The truth is it wasn't until the year 1911 that going to a doctor statistically was more likely to heal you than kill you. The way that medicine was up until then 1911 was the cut off year. The Rambam obviously felt that he was a good enough doctor that he healed more people than he killed. But he said there there are doctors around who just don't know their stuff. And he put this book away because he was just too difficult for amateur doctors. Now he says And why am I telling you all this? Meaning who really needs all of this information? I heard he says and they've told me okay for that Solomon King Solomon made this book the safer force and people when they got sick would consult it and like almost magically they would just get well saw that people and when they got sick they didn't do and I'll say for they relied on the medicine they said by the medals will make me well and he and hid it away. He said that's what I heard people say apart from the complete lack of any merit in this argument. Okay. meaning meaning it's just astounding that anyone would say this then you are ascribing to and those who agreed with him the rabbis a stupidity the most ridiculous low-life idiotic people in the world would not think that who would think that you wouldn't go to a doctor because it'll be bad for your said it's ridiculous And according to that way of thinking which is crazy which is foolish if a person's hungry and they decide to have lunch they can cure cure their hunger. God will believe something. Oh you you lack. Why are you eating? God will satisfy your pain and take it away. What are you talking about? I'm having lunch. He says the ram um this this way of thinking that you would not cure a disease just because it was going to be bad for your says I can't believe anyone would say that. It's very interesting and Rashi doesn't get a a right of response here unfortunately because he was already already gone and let's just say like the Ramban that it's only for certain special people certain people on a very high level even then I don't think that the Ramban would necessarily agree and therefore here we have this kind of line on the one hand you have this beautiful med number 20 the shabas there were two things remember all these things that were created on Shabas like the slip. There were two things which God said I could create that but I'm not going to but they had to wait till it's a wonderful message and Adam on Shabas was if you like given a a divine insight he was able to bring out these two things which God said I'm going to hold back. I'm not going to create and shabby created. What were they? Well, one you already know. One is fire. Adam brings two stones and he and he pushes them together. Butin he creates fire. Again, this is not literally was on Shabas means once man had emerged into the world. That's why we light to show our power of creativity. the candle of Havdal is to say this is the beginning of an incredibly creative week that I'm going to change nature in a way that improves the world and he brought two animals the bazar and he he mated them he crossbreed them together the yatsa and he made a mule he brings a horse and a donkey and he makes a mule >> wonderful these are this this is the power of man's technology amazing by the way You see, Rabbi Saxs talks about this many times. The contrast between this and the myth of Prometheus, the Greek myth of Prometheus. How did man get fire according to the Greek myth of Prometheus? >> Stole it. >> He stole it from the gods. The gods don't want you to have the technology. They want to keep it for themselves. They want you to live in misery and poverty of mind and and without the ability to actually change the world. Our answer to that this is our answer to the myth of Prometheus that no God gave us the technology to create this the ability to do this this is an amazing thing on the other hand there's a lot of hands in the sh here's a from that you may not have thought about too many times these are the children in all the the generations of the kings of the ayah and there's all sorts of confusion whether they children or whether They're siblings and there's inter sort of incest and all sorts of things going on. But who is this Anna? Whoa. Okay. He found the mules in the desert when he was pasturing or hering the donkeys of his father. Like what is the Torah telling me that this Anna was the famous non-Jew that found the mules in the desert when he was hering donkeys? Says the says the midrash number 22 the fire and crossbreeding. They weren't created during the the the uh the six days of braces but they they had the potential so far very similar to the previous midrashim what was the story with he brings this what are these mules half horse half donkey what did father and son team do in order to create these mules. They found they got a female donkey and they mated it with a male horse and they created a mu says to them. You have brought into the world a destructive force. Mules are infertile. You succeed. You succeeded in breeding them. But you bred something which has no every species is able to breed. You created something that just damages. Can't replace itself. Therefore, I'm going to punish you, says God. And I'm going to bring you something. Something which damages. What did he use? Strange mag. What did Hashem do? He brought a female snake. Snake theon and he mated it with a male toad. the yatsmen and he produced a highly poisonous lizard not good so it seems so I don't know is crossbreeding animals good or is it bad >> I mean you know but Adamarish was was praised that this is one of the amazing technological things that Adamarish did on mos shabas together with fire it's interesting we've got a min of lighting a a havda candle we don't have a min of crossbreeding an animal on m shabas you know as as a as a to the you know whatever. So how how do you put together these two midrashins together express the whole on the one hand you have an idea which is technology you can you can edit genes it's an amazing thing you should do it you should heal people on the other hand you have a measure says but you could be creating a monster here you could be making something which is massic how do you um how do you navigate between those there are various ways you can harmonize them maybe it depends on the the intention on the lashen sham why am I trying to do this is it money making hubris Is it denying God in the world? Is it trying to heal people? And again, how do you understand those motivations? Not a straightforward thing. I brought you a footnote in the uh in the in the sheet here about uh Rav Desler who tries to to do that, tries to understand that one of them, Adam was trying to improve mankind, but uh but Anna with his mules was just trying to do it for himself for bad reasons. But you have to again balance these two things. It's not straightforward. Do you always want to improve people? I brought you a a raenu baki at the top of page seven which says that forgetfulness is an enormous bra. Oh, I have a disease. I have a cure that can bring people memory retention that they couldn't even dream of. You'll never forget anything says who would not want to forget all of the pain that we go through in life that is such a braha that we're able to forget and we're able to move on and the grief that we're able to forget. You think you're enhancing the world by creating memory retention of uh superhuman proportions, you're actually causing major problems. >> Women would only have one child. >> Women Women would would only have one child, probably not even one. Okay, look at number 24, Rabbi Dr. Jason Winer. Rabbi Dr. Winer is an incredible uh individual. He is the uh a senior Rob in Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. He is one of the world's leading thinkers on medical ethics. a really phenomenal man and also at Saddak and Anov and a big time and very cadite to connect with him. I've had the real privilege of doing that a few times. He says number 24, the challenges may prove to be much more complex than we ever imagined. For example, concerns relate to off related to offtarget impacts of manipulating our genome were addressed above above. But there are also potential moral offtarget effects that some thinkers warn us about. If the human body is perfected to the point that it doesn't age or slow down, what incentives would there be for the old to make way for the young? If the young are not given a chance to lead, might this lead to a prolongation prolongation of the young in functional immaturity? Can you imagine if old people, older people never slowed down and gave the opportunity for younger people to take over? Young people would just remain immature children till they were 90 years old. Some of them seem still do. Okay. But it would happen. Why? Why do I need to step up? The old people have it. They've got it. They're still running around at 100 years old like they were when they were 25. That's not necessarily a good thing. Enhancing the vitality of the old may thus slow or prevent the maturation of the young. The young have no incentive to lead and the old have no incent desire to pass the baton to the new generation. What will hamper human progress and social advancement etc etc. People had long lifespans. They'd have less motivation, less innovation. Why do I need to make an impact in my 30s? I'll do it in my 13s. So all of these things which we think we need to heal, we don't necessarily need to heal. We might they might not necessarily be curses. They might be blessings uh as well. So I just brought you just in the last uh few minutes cuz we again we started the shear half an hour late. So I'll just go a minute or two and then we'll uh we'll gosh walked here from correct that's mot I I was I would say I would have walked from Alen but I actually wouldn't have walked from Alen. Okay. So I just let me show you what else is on the sheet so you can look at it in your own time. Uh first of all on page eight I brought you another quote from Rabbi Wina on the precautionary principle. One of the answers to balancing this equation is the rabbis have often treated new technologies with a lot of caution. Look at the early tumors on IVF shouldn't do it. people are not going to have the ability to to to to have enough care between the different fertility clinics and people are going to get the wrong babies and they're going to be cross-fertilized and it does happen. Okay, maybe it'll be dangerous and as time has gone on the hakic approach to IVF has become more and more um permissive but it's but it started precautionary. Let's not just rush into this too quickly. Let's think about And he sets that out in a very interesting way. Just in the last um minute just in dealing with the uh the haki status of unimplanted embryos. I brought you here from the David from Tel Aviv. Basically unimplanted embryos in a lab do not have the status of a human being according to anybody. They're not a zero. They're not something that can just be kind of thrown away randomly. But they're not something where there's any shila of abortion. and therefore they can be discarded where they have a genetic defect in order that you can choose the embryos which have the the desired um traits. And I just brought you some of the issues on pages 9 and 10 where this comes in. Obviously avoiding genetic defects is very important. What happens though when the ch the parents want a child with a defect that we would call a defect but they may not call a defect. two parents with dwarfism that insist they want a child that also has dwarfism because how are they going to deal with a child that doesn't have dwarfism? Now, you would say, "Well, why would you want that for a child?" But maybe they'll say, "We do." Um, what about um uh gender choosing? I only want girls. I only want boys. I already have six girls. I want to do purvu with a boy. Rabadi yaso said after six, you can select the gender, but before six, you can't. Ra said five is already enough. I don't know exactly where the where the difference comes from but you have cases very interesting cases where you have a cohen who is infertile and his wife has to have artificial insemination by a donor but he dka wants the kid to be a girl because if it's a boy and the boy's not a cohen everyone's going to be s look why aren't why isn't your son docking with you so he wants a girl davka sometimes a person would say we uh we want a child through artificial insemination it's not going to be my child but my ra is makmir on um on niga with someone who's not your child or therefore dapka I want a boy not a girl so the father won't have these issues of yud there can be all sorts of reasons why this may be relevant and again this has become quite a common thing so again we've done that really quickly um but uh there are many sources you can take away for homework at the end of the day we have this very interesting dilemma on the one hand on the other hand we have to navigate through it uh but with good people behind like Rabbi Wina and others and Greg Gdon with Zak for to help us. We will do that. So, next week we will pick up on this two-part series which I'm very excited about. Uh so, buckle up your seat belts. It's going to be a real roller coaster next week and the week after.