Case Western is really on the move when it comes to participating in international conversations about bioethics. Soon, people around the world will be trying to get the words ‘Case Western Reserve University’ onto sweatshirts How do they do that, anyway? I guess it must be shorter in Hebrew, because Stuart Youngner and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) professor (and Case product) Shlomit Zuckerman announced this week that they will work
to bring Israeli students to Case to earn advanced degrees in bioethics, to create a program of student-faculty exchange between the institutions, and to encourage dialogue and potential collaborative research in which cross-cultural issues of interest to both universities could be pursued.
There are all sorts of interesting issues in Isreal, and the role and nature of law there makes bioethics a different matter than pretty much anyplace else:
Traditional Jewish bioethics prohibit suicide, euthanasia, withholding or withdrawal of treatment, abortion when the mother’s life or health is not at risk, and many of the traditional “rights” associated with a strong concept of autonomy. For example, Zuckerman notes, an observant Jew would not consider it his or her right to seek physician-assisted suicide as a way to avoid present or future suffering from cancer.
In Jewish tradition … human beings are to act as responsible stewards in preserving their bodies, which “belong to God.” They are also duty bound to violate any other law in order to save human life, short of committing murder, incest or public idolatry.