Ethical Issues in Gene Therapy

Gene therapy involves ethics, because scientists are making changes to genes, the building blocks of the human body.Currently, therapeutic gene therapy is available to treat specific genetic disorders by editing cells in specific body parts. For example, gene therapy can treat hematopoetic disease. There is also a controversial gene therapy called "germline gene therapy", in which genes in a sperm or egg can be edited to prevent genetic disorder in the future generation. It is unknown how this type of gene therapy affects long-term human development. In the United States, federal funding cannot be used to research germline gene therapy.

Medicine is a Collective Precept

Medicine in the Shari' a is a duty to be performed by a competent member of the Muslim community. More precisely, in Malikite and Shafi’ite Muslim Law medicine is fard kifaya, that is, a collective precept which not everyone is obliged to obey; some believers do so, others are exempt from it.

Medicines and Medical Care are Compulsory

The religious justification for recourse to medical treatment is present in the well known hadith “There is no disease that Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment” (Bukhari).60 Ibn Hanbal considered medical care permitted but not compulsory because it is better to trust in God rather than the efficacy of drugs. By contrast, the Hanbalite jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) judged medical treatment compulsory. However, for the majority of jurists, recourse to treatment seems indispensable for recovery, which is granted only by God according to Qur'an 2680: “and when I am ill, it is He who cures me.” A hadith collected by Muslims confirms: “there is a remedy is applied to the disease. It is cured with the permission of Allah.”61 Islam has no sect which opposes recourse to medicine in principle.

Euthanasia

No specific distinctions between the different cases of euthanasia exist in classical Muslim Law. In any case, modern fatwas do not dwell on the different types of euthanasia and generally do not go beyond the distinction between active and passive euthanasia, condemning them both as murder. However, many differences can be perceived within this condemnation

A person is considered legally dead and all the Shari’a’s principles can be applied when one of the following signs is established:

a.Complete stoppage of the heart and breathing, which is deemed irreversible by doctors.

b.Complete stoppage of all vital functions of the brain, which is deemed irreversible by doctors, and the brain has started to degenerate.

Under these circumstances it is justified to disconnect life-support systems even though some organs continue to function automatically with these devices.63 Islamic ethics does not approve of a person being in pain so that he or she may simply remain alive.

Suicide and Martyrdom

The Qur'an contains no explicit indications on suicide. Nevertheless, Muslim commentators understand Qur'an 4.29: “Do not kill yourself, surely God is merciful to you,” as a prohibition against suicide or against killing other Muslims; but other interpretations can be accepted. Qur'an 3.145, recalling that the time of death is in the hands of the Creator alone, seems to complement this: “Nor can a soul die except by God’s leave, the term being fixed as by writing.”

The preparation of a body for burial

The high rate of mortality in pre-modern societies made the social existence of the dead very concrete, and because of this, the rites of death and burial, by way of which one separates the dead from life, are one of the important ways for us to learn about the cultural values that fashion the lives of different societies. Funeral ceremonies provide the living a ritual of departure from the dead; the ritual treatment of the body by relatives suggests a halfway situation for the dead person, as one who is located between two worlds. An example of this is the washing of the body, the use of perfuming materials, and the cutting of hair and nails – all typical of life, as opposed to the sealing of the body's pores. In many societies the rituals of parting from the dead are scant and simple, while the rituals involved with transferring the deceased to the world of the dead – meaning the preparation of the deceased for burial – are longer and more complex.

We learn from the Qur'an that God controls the lives of people in this world and in the world to come – The Hereafter; he invests them with the spirit of life and takes their lives away – evidence of his greatness and humanity's absolute dependence upon him. The Qur'an, however, does not present an organized approach to death. The philosophical and theological activity that took place in this area after the Prophet, is what created, based on the Qur'anic declarations, an organized Muslim theology of death. According to Jewish and Muslim traditions the lack of proper burial was and still is one of the greatest humiliations and was interpreted as a sign of exclusion from ones community

There are four stages of burial rituals in Islam 1.The washing of the body.

2.Dressing it in burial clothes. 3.Prayer during the funeral.

4.Burial with one's face turned to Mecca.

All stages that are extensively discussed in the fiqh, but not in the Qur'an, which does not deal with the laws of burial.12 The legal literature discusses extensively the instructions for washing the body and dressing it in appropriate attire because the grave is seen as a temporary station. The dead have to be prepared for the Resurrection Day when they will be spared or doomed according to their deeds in this world.