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The Human Genome Project
The hereditary properties of living organisms on earth are encoded by the chemical sequences of nucleotides forming their genes. Progress in molecular
genetics has already allowed deciphering the complete DNA nucleotide sequences of several bacteria and yeast, and the technologies developed are now applied to the much larger genomes of many plants and animals.
Since the mid 1980's, an international effort has been under way to determine the DNA sequences present in the 23 pairs of chromosomes which carry human heredity. Although just over 10% of the human genome is
presently known, the completion of this world-wide project sometime during the first decade of the 21st century will revolutionise medicine and our understanding of human biology. Of the estimated 80,000 genes
dispersed along the human DNA molecules, only about 3,000 are known today and these are mainly genes alterations of which cause hereditary genetic diseases. Completion of the human genome project will only be the
start of exciting research on the function of each of the genes which direct the development of the human embryo, fashion the body organs, and ensure the complex neuronal wiring of the brain. Considering the
polymorphism of many human genes and intergenic chromosomal segments, it will probably take several decades until we shall each have in our wallet an electronic card holding the sequence of our own individual DNA.
The configuration of the two sets of genes inherited by each of us from our biological father and mother will be known. This may help physicians make more exact diagnoses, but what will this project tell us about
humanity?
Sequencing of human genomes may at first glance appear to be a natural extension of modern genetic technology, but in truth it is a gigantic leap into
unknown directions. This is because our concept of what is mankind will be profoundly affected by the choice which has been made, at this point in the history of science, to exploit the primary sequence of the
hereditary material as a tool to study man. Philosophers and men of religion have, over the centuries of recorded human history, laboured on attempts to define the human with its interfacing intellect, spirit and
physical body. Scientific disciplines such as physiology, biochemistry, comparative anatomy and neuro-sciences have sketched a complex image of biological Homo sapiens, whereas paleo-history, and structural
analysis of myths and psychoanalysis have sketched a complex image of the human mind and soul. It must therefore be made clear that sequencing human DNA is an extreme reductionist approach to the human species, a
species characterised by intellectual creativity and interpersonal communication of knowledge and emotions. Examining the chemical structure of human DNA should by no means supersede the other disciplines studying
man. The human genome project will reveal the genetic program, through which joined human gametes develop into a human being, but it would be an intellectual disaster to equate Humanity with a DNA sequence.
The Rise and Scope of Bio-Ethics
These remarks may appear self-evident but what may not be evident, a priori, is that they command us to look at the information on individual human
genomes differently than for genomes of animals, plants, yeast, bacteria or viruses. Henceforth, bio-ethics has become an integral part of the human genome project, as illustrated by the setting up of the ELSI
program (ethical, legal and social issues of the human genome project). Human genetics summons gene-ethics; universities, governments and international organisations have established bio-ethics committees which
advise on guidelines and regulations for the applications of gene information to man.
The power of bio-ethics is real. Every week, scientific journals report the discovery of genes involved in human body functions and which through some
changes in their sequence cause hereditary diseases. Applying gene transfer technology to repair or manipulate the developmental program of humans, by micro-injecting genes into fertilised human eggs during in vitro
fertilisation (IVF) procedures, would be no more technically difficult than producing trans-genic or gene-targeted animals. Already in 1982, R. Palmiter produced giants rats of twice the normal size by injecting the
gene for growth hormone into fertilised eggs. Only ethical imperatives have prevented such manipulations for humans, a prohibition in the form of a moratorium on human germ-line therapy being accepted by the entire
scientific and medical community.
Gene therapy in somatic cells (i.e. cells of blood or tissues) is allowed because it affects only the individual whose disease is to be treated and not
the heredity he or she may transfer to offspring. Such gene transfer technology into somatic (non-gametal) cells is still technically difficult but holds a promise of repairing some gene deficiencies. However, what
is called 'enhancement' genetic engineering, such as modulation of height, bodily features or functions to achieve an 'improved' state are not to be tolerated because human variability excludes ever to define what
should be a perfect human being. Any such enhancement would always be arbitrary. Even more highly speculative would be genetic manipulation of psycho-cerebral functions, for which improvement of environmental living
conditions and education are much more likely to be effective.
The need for ethical reflection is not less important for applications of human genomic information which do not aim at changing man, but fall into the
broad field of diagnostics. Screening for gene alterations that cause grave inborn malformations allows precise diagnosis, and if done during prenatal life, or on in vitro-fertilised 2-4 cell embryos prior to
implantation into the uterus, gives the freedom of choice to have or not to have the child. It is already abundantly clear that ethics is not monolithic, societies differing widely in their view on therapeutic
abortion, pre-implantation diagnosis, sex selection (to avert chromosome X-linked diseases), and premarital exclusions (to prevent two carriers from having offspring). This underlines the essential role of genetic
counselling, ethically and culturally patterned, adhering to the codes directing physicians in their medical practice, with an intent to treat, while respecting privacy and autonomy. Ideally, decisions should be
made case-by-case, without excessive legislation that necessarily overlooks individual situations and sensibilities. Genetic counselling is particularly difficult for gene alterations which influence
susceptibilities to diseases appearing late in life (e.g. Huntington's chorea, Alzheimer, familial cancers). How can parents weigh the value of the healthy early part of life versus the high probability of disease
developing with age? But here, in addition, the complex relations between genes and environment come into play: susceptibility to a metabolic disease may be averted by diets and onset of cancer is related to life
style. Humans create their environment, and there is no genetic determinism.
The Pitfalls of a DNA Dogma.
The inherent ethical issue to the whole human genome project is to escape a deterministic categorizing of humans according to their genetic makeup. For
Richard C. Lewontin, in The Doctrine of DNA (1), the ideology of biological determinism has been the mainstream commitment of biologists. Its present incarnation is the claim that "when we know the molecule
that makes up all our genes, we will know what it is to be human". He reminds us that "development depends not only on the materials that have been inherited from parents (genes, egg chemicals) but also on
the particular temperature, humidity, nutrition, smell, sights and sounds (including what we call education) that impinge on the developing organism". There is a "unique interaction between gene
(sequences) and environmental sequences" which moulds individuals in all their diversity. Environmental conditions can change the genetic abilities, and man creates in large part his private environment: for
example, a computer allows handicapped people to write. Lewontin warns that the dichotomy of nature and nurture, the Darwinian selection of adapted genes by environment that is nowadays applied to human society by
socio-biology, may be a fallacy. Humans may differ in their abilities because of innate, genetically inherited differences, but these differences are not fixed since changes in environment through education and
cultural creativity can deeply modify their impact.
Social discrimination could well be the major peril of genetics without ethics. A talmudic text (2) interprets the biblical account that mankind
started with a single Adam, as an injunction against discrimination between families, ethnic groups or races since all humans have a common ancestor. Nevertheless man is afflicted by destructive discriminative
pulsions. The human genome diversity subproject led by L. Cavalli-Sforza (3), confirms the unity of mankind in its diversity. In fact, about 85% of all identified genetic variations are between any two individuals
from the same ethnic group; only 8% are between ethnic groups within a race and 7% are found between major geographical human races. Simply, the human genome project shows that there are no races separated
genetically. As once said by Cavalli-Sforza, the 'skin-deep' differences of colour irrationally impress humans into justifying their racial prejudices.
There is not one 'human genome' since each individual human being has a slightly different genome sequence arrangement, with around 0.2% nucleotide
differences. Taking into account that genes occupy only one-tenth of the whole DNA, and that not all differences change the protein coded by the gene, one can calculate that about one of every twelve of our
maternally and paternally inherited genes differ from those of any random neighbour. Who is then a 'normal' human from the genetic viewpoint? The Homo sapiens genome can be easily recognised as distinct from that of other animal or primate species, but there is no 'ideal' human genome. Nobody can be qualified as genetically sane or genetically deficient, concluded the Quebec Genetic group (4). "It is important to conceive man in his complexity and originality, to recognise that all humans carry abnormal recessive genes and susceptibility genes". There could be 5-30 'abnormal' genes in each of us. Such genetic diversity among individuals probably exists in every living species, but mankind is aware of them, very sensitive in detecting the different in the other, and also rightly very sympathetic to the suffering due to pathogenic genetic alterations in a child.
The notions of 'good and bad', as ascribed to genes, has pervaded science. Some claim that as medicine aims to eradicate viruses and other pathogens
infecting the human body, it ought also to eradicate 'bad' genes. But what is called 'bad' genes are in fact always retained through selection by some historical environmental conditions, the best example being
sickle cell anaemia mutations (which in Africa protected from malaria). Often mutations causing diseases have arisen independently at a certain time and in a certain geographical location, indicating a selection
process. Who is to know the outcome of their mass eradication by germline gene therapy? Further, how can science and society impose what is normal and what is not. Nazi Germany showed how short is the road from
genetic hygiene, which it evilly adopted from Galton's eugenics, to genocide of 'bad' people. The individual has a right to make decisions, but these should never be imposed as a dictate by society. F.D. Ledley (5)
points out the "essential distinction between eugenics and genetics in the importance ascribed to individual welfare relative to society". The major advances offered by medical genetics are not eugenic so
long as they allow free autonomous medical decisions of individuals to undergo gene screening or gene therapy, or to avoid having offspring with a recognised genetic disease. Human diversity is a fact, and a
blessing for mankind. At what point some element of genetic diversity is perceived as an unbearable genetic defect should remain an individual choice for the affected or the foetus-bearing mother.
Bio-Ethics of the Human Genome Project
These questions of individual diversity and of group norms indeed reach the heart of the morality question, which Jürgen Habermas (6) describes as a
paradox: "having to resolve at once the double task of preserving inviolability of individuals by equal respect of their dignity, while at the same time protecting the inter-subjective mutual recognition by
which individuals establish themselves as members of one community. To these two tasks correspond the principles of justice and solidarity".
The human genome and the genome diversity projects will not lead to a rebirth of eugenics and genetic discrimination, provided their conduct respects
human rights. Toward this objective, the International Bio-Ethics Committee of UNESCO has put forward a "Universal Declaration on the Human genome and Human rights" which was adopted by member nations on
November 11, 1997. On the Jubilee fiftieth year of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, prompted by the atrocities of World War II, this bio-ethics declaration upholds solidarity and
justice by proclaiming the following:
Article 1: "The human genome underlies the fundamental unity of all members of the human family, as well as the recognition of their
inherent dignity and diversity. In a symbolic sense, it is the heritage of humanity". Article 3: "The human genome, which by its nature evolves, is subject to mutations. It contains potentialities that are
expressed differently according to each individual's natural and social environment including the individual's state of health, living conditions, nutrition and education".
Like many other national or international bio-ethics committees, the UNESCO Declaration attempts to set up guidelines to protect freedom, autonomy,
privacy and confidentiality toward The state, employers, insurance or health companies for all investigations related to one's genome sequence. It also warns researchers about their responsibilities including
"caution, intellectual honesty and integrity in carrying out their research" but adds that this applies as well " in the presentation and utilisation of their findings" because of the
"ethical and social implications" of the human genome project. Scientist know little about how genes really influence human nature and behaviour, and are often misunderstood by the media especially with
regard to genes that may contribute some small effect to psychosocial traits, such as aggressiveness, intelligence, sexual behaviour. Results of the human genome project do not tell us anything about the essential
problem of the unique interactions between genes and environmental sequences1, between genome inheritance and cultural education. The main task of bio-ethics is to warn against the ideology of genetic
determinism. This task is expressed in the clearest sense by the UNESCO Declaration:
Article 2: "a) Everyone has a right to respect for their dignity and for their rights regardless of their genetic characteristics, b)
That dignity makes it imperative not to reduce individuals to their genetic characteristics and to respect their uniqueness and diversity".
It is beautiful to have such a affirmation of human freewill and dignity in a Declaration dealing with the most colossal genetic program ever
undertaken. Curiously, this affirmation is not self-evident because the public has been brainwashed into believing that genes determine who we are. This problematic surfaced with accrued furore in the recent debate
on reproductive cloning.
The Reproductive Cloning Debate
Molecular genetics does not only discover genes by cloning DNA, but allows use of the cloned genes in order to express the proteins that they encode,
in particular for the production of proteins with pharmaceutical value such as insulin, interferon, growth hormone, blood coagulation factors and so on. Expression of cloned genes entails genetic engineering of
bacteria, yeast or mammalian cells into which the genes of interest are grafted. Health regulatory bodies have approved the industrial production of many such recombinant DNA medications. But, by grafting the genes
into whole animals, it has become possible to produce a thousand times larger amounts of a given recombinant protein in the milk of a sheep or a cow. Registration of such procedures by health authorities requires
the demonstration of genetic identity between the transgenic sheep or cows, an identity that can be best ensured by cloning the entire animal. The immense progress in IVF has led to the possibility of initiating
embryonic development from a mammalian egg (oocyte) from which the resident gametal haploid DNA was removed and replaced by the DNA of a cell from an already existing diploid animal. Since 1987, bovines and ovines
have been 'cloned' in this way by transfer of very early embryonic cells. In 1997, Dolly the sheep was born from a similar nuclear transfer but this time using the cell from an adult donor sheep (7). Although this
technology is far from being established and reproducible, speculations about implications for human reproduction have caused colossal ethical commotion. Without going into the medical potential applications of such
a new twist in IVF (treatment of complete sterility or prevention of hereditary disease), or in the scientific hazards and limitations (8), it is interesting to analyse reactions of bio-ethics committees to the
hypothetical prospects of applying reproductive cloning to man.
In January 1998, twenty of the member states of the Council of Europe adopted this statement: "considering that the instrumentalisation of human beings through deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings is contrary to human dignityand
thus constitutes a misuse of biology and medicine. Article 1: Any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead, is prohibited." The
original text of the UNESCO International Bio-Ethics Committee Declaration was revised by the political inter-governmental committee to include an additional Article 11: "Practices which are contrary to
human dignity such as reproductive cloning of human beings, shall not be permitted".
If we accept with enthusiasm the anti-deterministic premise that "dignity makes it imperative not to reduce individuals to their genetic
characteristics," as in Article 2b of the UNESCO Declaration, how are we to understand that "genetically identical human beings is contrary to human dignity"? A hypothetical child born by a
nuclear-transfer IVF procedure would be a genetic twin to the donor of the cell used to fertilise the enucleated oocyte. As any other IVF test-tube baby, the cloned child will be born to a mother who carried the
implanted embryo through pregnancy and birth. Natural reproduction produces genetic twins once in every 270 pregnancies. One of the major arguments against any ideology of genetic determinism in man, is based on
studies of genetic twins who have been raised apart in adoptive families providing different environments. From such research, wrote Thomas J. Bouchard recently (9), "the results of twin studies refute both
biological and environmental determinism…they account for the uniqueness of each of us". Indeed, personality traits of genetic twins correlate only by 50%, compared to fraternal twins 25%, and non-twin siblings
11%. There is genetic influence but by far no identity, in the same way as the environment of a common womb and education conditions do not produce identity. Another study of cognitive abilities in genetic twins
raised apart or together and followed throughout life, indicates (10) that genetic factors account for 50% of the correlation, shared environmental factors for 33%, non-shared environment influences 17%, while the
error of measurements in such studies is estimated at 10%. From the animal cloning, we know that the genetic program does not determine all the biology, cloned animals have different coloured hair spots, the
immunological system is not identical and probably so is the brain wiring since neuronal synapses are largely epigenetic (11). Maternal mitochondrial DNA, her nutrition and living conditions, the position in the
womb, all influence the genetic developmental program. Cloning to make a human replica is an impossible illusion.
What is then the meaning of the claim that giving birth to genetically identical human beings, even deliberately, is against human dignity? Do we mean
to revive the myth of genetic identity as the old eugenic determinism? Human dignity means education, love, respect of the uniqueness of any person, in short Human Rights. These are not violated by the mere
procedure if it is done with respect of the rights of the mother, of the child and of the donor of the genome. The United Nations also recognised the basic human right to benefit from scientific advancement. Upfront
banning of a potentially new IVF technology, that could overcome medical problems in procreation, is not a dignified human answer.
The Council of Europe statement also opposes the deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings as 'instrumentalisation'. This is
reminiscent of the opposition to IVF in the early 80's, based on the view that making a human being in a test-tube was undignified. The myriad of children since born by IVF in all its forms, demonstrates the fallacy
of such fear: instrumentalised reproduction, has not desacralised reproduction but increased the desire and possibilities of unfortunate couples to have their own progeny. IVF is an option, a difficult one in view
of the long treatments needed, but which gives a freedom of choice just as much as adopting a child or remaining childless are valid choices. It could be argued that the ethical issue is in the cloned twin offspring
being born much later than the twin father or mother and in another womb. If so, IVF embryo freezing and conservation over years should be prohibited; moreover, being born later and from another womb actually
decreases yet the risk of exaggerated resemblance between the genome donor and the cloned child.
Genetic and other Manipulations in the Embryo
In the public perception, cloning has been wrongly associated with genetic manipulations to produce humans with certain characteristics. This issue has
nothing to do with cloning, which keeps the genome intact, but has to do with the illusion of a human evolution. No less than Stephen W. Hawking has recently made headlines by claiming that if man does not 'improve'
himself genetically, computers will take over by being more intelligent. But, evolutionists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Gould (12) have recognised that in the last half million years, Homo sapiens has evolved through a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired culture rather than through natural gene selection. Which genetic changes would be improvements? There is neither an ideal human genome nor an ideal baby. Normality is in the human diversity of "naked capacities for acquiring the ability to do" (L.F. Ward). The dangers of misuse of genetic interventions, for making humans with an increase or decrease in height or other feature (which we would know how to do from animal experiments), or planning illusive changes in IQ when we do not have any evidence that it is genetically fixed, are much more frightening than producing a genetic twin by cloning.
Nevertheless, what if the gene change is to fix a hereditary disease? Article 24 of the Universal Declaration states: "The International
Bio-Ethics Committee of UNESCO should give advice [..] in particular regarding the identification of practices that couldbe contrary to human dignity such as germ-line interventions". DNA modifications
in the early embryo affect his gametes and future generations. There is danger in tinkering with part of heredity before we know the entire structure and functioning of every bit and piece of human DNA. But if one
day we know how to do it, the criterion will be whether investing in genetic changes of man rather than in living conditions and education is not against human dignity. Bio-Ethics will be asked to make the decision,
because Ethics has the power to avoid sliding on slippery slopes.
Embryo splitting, another way for deliberate making of twins, was achieved already in 1993 at George Washington Medical Centre. The painful and
difficult experience of women who undergo IVF could be minimised if done only once in a lifetime, successful embryos being split and some cells being frozen aside to make them available for a second pregnancy.
Splitting 2-4 cell embryos is authorised in many countries for pre-implantation diagnosis of genetic disease in IVF embryos from high-risk couples. Another use of early embryonic toti-potent cells could be
laboratory cultures (without starting a pregnancy) in order to provide pancreatic or liver tissues for transplantation. If done from cloned embryos, the hazards of foreign graft procedures could be avoided.
The morality of manipulating embryos depends deeply on culture and religion. Christianity sanctifies life from the moment of fertilisation, whereas
Judaism and Islam consider the embryo to acquire human nature only after 40 days. Ethical reflection would be wise to respect individual religions and philosophies. As Rene Frydman (13) remarks, the little mass of
cells that form the very early embryo has meaning only within the parental project. Some may view pre-implantation selection as more acceptable than therapeutic abortion, but in both it is the capability of assuming
the charges of parenthood for an embryo with genetic malformation, which is the final ethical decision.
It is important to know that embryo genetic testing does not increase the overall number of abortions. In fact a Dutch study (14) shows that when no
test for a genetic disease was available, 50% of couples at risk did not want to have children, whereas 85%-98% of them decided in favour of procreation once gene testing and counselling for mothers was available.
Ethical guidelines consider the mother has final authority on abortion. This is in line with the Jewish legal principle that it is the danger that the foetus poses to the mother's life, which justifies authorising
abortion. Knowledge that a severe congenital genetic defect may threaten the mother's mental well-being is enough to accede to her will to terminate pregnancy. The husband or partner agreement is not required, and
some view this as a threat to family values. But single parenthood is now recognised socially and legally, and it has not destroyed family values. Treating sterility with anonymous donations of sperm from banks or
of oocytes, does not pre-empt the cultural role of the parents, although they deprive the child of the right of knowing his biological parents and their medical genetic antecedents. This is why some consider
fertilisation by cloning as an ethical alternative if done only for medical indications. A human child is an end, never a means, whatever the method through which he was born.
Human biology cannot be separated from culture, tradition and religions
Sex in humans is a cultural activity no less than a biological one. Genetically, sexual reproduction is cardinal for the maintenance of healthy
diversity in the human species. The mixing of genes, although viewed by some as a genetic game of roulette (J. Fletcher), reduces the chances of recessive genetic diseases and is the substrate on which evolutionary
selection operates. Insects devised complicated ways to ensure gene mixing through sex (15) but humans do not marry only to mix up their genes. Since the early Neolithic village, humans have developed rules of
kinship and mating in which culture is as much at stake as genetics (16). Humans practise a measured cultural inbreeding, which may not mix the genes well but preserves cultural inheritance. Indeed, large-scale gene
screenings by DNA technology reveal ethnic-specific mutations (e.g. BRCA1 gene) which may be maintained by cultural endogamy (17). Traditions and religions are cultural factors, which overlay human natural biology.
Age-old beliefs imbedded in religious traditions, myths and folklore are important for genetic counselling but are often disregarded by scientists. One
of the moral challenges of bio-ethics is harmonisation between free scientific advances and the multicultural sensibilities which have made mankind. A definition of the Human has to include the age-old values that
have been made transparent by the structural analyses of myths (18), and religious messages must also be investigated to reveal how they mould the structure of our rational mind. Thus, a major contemporary Jewish
philosopher, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik, reads the first two chapters of Genesis as describing two views of man that are complementary to each other (20). The description in the first chapter is that of universal
man conquering the world, as does the scientist using the rational mind that makes him "at God's image" able to apprehend nature. The second chapter describes community-man with religious feelings and
queries, confronted with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. For Soloveichik, every human has these two sides in his ego and each side has to learn from the other: indeed, the conquering scientific man learns
from his alter ego to excel also in the ethical moral sphere. There is no division of tasks between them, but a synthesis and coupling of mutual interactions and exchanges.
Within a Hegelian dialectic of the "Universal realising itself in the Particular" (19), a universal secular ethics based solely on reason has
no reality if it does not understand and accept the lessons of the particular cultural traditions experienced in human philosophies, myths and religions. Only then does ethics go beyond the general utilitarian
calculation of costs and benefits, of evolutive adaptation of the species, to care for the old, the physically or socially handicapped or inadapted and recognise each for his particular needs. Religious morals may
even threaten universal rational ethics: the more novice says Nietzsche in his Antichrist (21), is "the active compassion for all the misfits, the weak - that Christianism". It may be paradoxical that
morals as issued from tradition, cultures and religions are not the authoritarian absolute norms feared by modern man, but actually express existential motions, akin to Bergson's élan vital, that liberate
from the egoism of intelligent utilitarian reason (22). Spinoza, who freed philosophy from dualism of irrational metaphysics, also said: "The Good that anyone who pursues virtue desires for himself, he will
similarly desire it for the other humans, and the more so if he has acquired a greater knowledge of God" (23). The monist concept unifying man's nature and moral soul, in line with genetics and neurosciences,
needs to be compensated by acknowledging alterity, the existence of others in their endless diversities, which each reflect an Infinite that is the attribute of the Divine. Thus we understand Spinoza: religions,
myths, traditions, teach us more than sociobiology or secular humanism alone, about human identity or on how to enhance our desire for goodness.
Ethical attitudes to the problems of human genetics are so varied, as illustrated by clashes on selective abortion, cloning or gene improvement, that
the best to hope for is an Ethic of Discussion6, in which consensus is not obtained by force, be it force of logical reasoning or of empirical evidence. A fortiori, the religious contributions should not
be by force, but by in-depth insights that extract their universal message11. The technology project of the Tower of Babel failed according to the Zohar (24), because humans having acquired different
languages failed to understand each other. Hearing with open heart the voices of plurality, of biologists, physicians, philosophers, religious teachers, lawyers, politicians, will save us from stumbling on the road
of scientific progress, over our new freedom of choices.
References
(1) Richard C. Lewontin, The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as Ideology, Penguin Books, London, 1993
(2) Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a
(3) Luca et Francesco Cavalli Sforza, Qui sommes nous ? Une histoire de la diversite humaine, Albin Michel , Paris, 1994.
(4) B. Leclerc et al., Int. J. Bioeth. 4, p. 2889, 1993.
(5) F.D. Ledley, J. Med. Ethics 20, p. 257, 1994.
(6) Jurgen Habermas, De l'ethique de la discussion, Editions du Cerf, Paris, 1992.
(7) Ian Wilmut et al., Nature 385, p. 810, 1997.
(8) Michel Revel, Les Cahiers du Comite consultatif National d'Ethique pour les Sciences de la vie et de la sante (France) 15, p. 10, 1997; The
Scientist, 12, p. 38, 1998.
(9) Thomas J. Bouchard, The Sciences, October 1997, p. 52
(10) Irving I. Gottesman, Science 276, p. 1522, 1997.
(11) Jean-Pierre Changeux, Paul Ricoeur, La Nature et la Regle, Editions Odile Jacob, Paris,1998.
(12) Stephen J. Gould, Life's Grandeur: The spread to excellence from Plato to Darwin, Vintage Publ., London, 1997..
(13) Rene Frydman, Dieu, La Medecine et l'Embryon, Editions Odile Jacob, Paris, 1997.
(14) H. Galjaard, Diagnostic prenatal: chronique d'une vie annoncee. Le Courrier de l'UNESCO, Septembre 1994, p. 17.
(15) Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, Penguin Books, 1997.
(16) Claude Levi-Strauss, Les structures elementaires de la parente. Mouton, Paris-La Haye, 1967.
(17) K.M. Egan et al., The Lancet, 347, p. 1645, 1996; B. Newman et al., JAMA 279, p. 915, 1998.
(18) Claude Levi-Strauss, Mythologiques: L'homme nu. Plon, Paris, 1971.
(19) Joseph B. Soloveichik, The Man of Faith, Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 1972.
(20) G.W.F Hegel, Lecon sur la philosophie de l'histoire. Traduction de Papaioannou. 10/18, U.G.E., Paris.
(21) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, Idees /Gallimard, Paris, 1974. p. 12
(22) Francisco Alberoni, La Morale, Plon/Pocket, Paris, 1996, p. 105
(23) Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics, GF-Flammarion, Paris 1965. Part IV proposition XXXVII.
(24) Zohar (Book of Splendor), I, 76b
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