‘Negotiating Life’

Israel endorses one of the world's most liberal regulations of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and human cloning. After an introduction to the technologies and their regulation in many Western countries and on an international level, I discuss ethical and moral concerns formulated in Western countries, many of which have no room in the bioethical discourse in Israel. The traditional argument is to explain this with religion: particularly, by arguing that Jewish religious teachings lead to a conception of ESC research and cloning as morally unproblematic. Nevertheless, in order to fully understand the Israeli situation, I argue that we have to take into consideration prevalent political narratives. The ‘demographic threat’ that the Jewish majority population in Israel will be outnumbered by non-Jews in the not too distant future provides a context of risk to the discourse on ‘Israeli cells’. Contexts of risk extend the scope of self-governing of individuals by predetermining ways of preventing particular risks. Instead of there being a consistent governmental policy on how to regulate medical technologies, the Israeli bioethics discourse shaped the regulations on ESC research and human cloning by providing decision-makers with particular understandings of what is ‘thinkable and sayable’. A discussion of the deliberation of the Prohibition of Genetic Intervention Law of 1999, which was extended in March 2004 for another 5-year period, will illustrate this claim.