Knowledge and attitudes toward human cloning in Israel

Abstract

The success of mammal cloning in 1997 has brought the issue of human cloning into public discussion. Human cloning has several aspects and potential applications for use in both reproductive and non-reproductive matters. The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes toward human cloning in Israel. Data from 120 respondents (68 health professionals and 52 non-health professionals), all Jewish, Hebrew speaking with at least 15 years of education each, were collected using two questionnaires that dealt with knowledge and attitudes toward human cloning. Results showed that although health professionals had significantly more knowledge that non-health professionals, all respondents had poor knowledge about cloning. No difference in attitudes was found between the groups. Most respondents opposed human cloning, but more positive attitudes toward non-reproductive cloning were found. The results are discussed in the context of the deficit model. The findings indicate a need to provide information about human cloning to allow people to form their attitudes based on factual knowledge.

Attitudes towards human reproductive cloning, assisted reproduction and gene selection: a survey of 4600 British twins

“…Our data support findings of previous research on public attitudes towards biotechnologies, suggesting that men tend to be less sceptical of medical technology than women (Napolitano and Ogunseitan, 1999;Barnoy et al, 2006;Shepherd et al, 2007). In a Christian context, a possible explanation for this would be that on average, women are more religious than men.…”

“…Our findings regarding the positive correlation between the degree of religiosity of respondents and more restrictive attitudes towards medical technologies support the commonly held belief that religious Christians are more reluctant than secular Christians and other, non-Christian, denominations to accept the use of medical technology in the field of reproduction (Evans, 2002). Although we did not carry out any systematic research on this topic specifically, we have reasons to believe that opposition to HRC is less strong in non-Christian contexts, especially in those were 'playing God' is not seen an reprehensible act as such (Bainbridge, 2003;Barnoy et al, 2006;Prainsack, 2006).…”

Ethnocultural community leaders’ views and perceptions on biobanks and population specific genomic research: a qualitative research study

“…The "public understanding of science" was hitherto framed under the "knowledge deficit model" which has been popular among scientists, health professionals and policy-makers (Brunk, 2006). The deficit model advocates for expert forms of knowledge as a basis for scientific governance, innovation uptake and deciding the most important public policy questions (Barnoy et al, 2006;Brunk, 2006). This model assumes, firstly, that poor uptake of innovations and new technologies is caused essentially by a lack of adequate scientific knowledge on the part of the public or related user groups.…”

“…Our finding of ethnocultural community leaders' interest in an active partnership model in biobank development, both in deliberations and decision-making, runs counter to genomics scientists' views (Egalite et al, 2007;Ozdemir et al, 2008) that public awareness and involvement, while perceived as important, is external to the primary mandate of scientific practice by genomics scientists. The asymmetry between ethnocultural community leaders' and genomics scientists' perceptions about who should be engaged in public awareness and involvement goes against the benefits of providing information to laypeople as well as to experts to allow them to form their attitudes based on factual knowledge (Barnoy et al, 2006) or for deciding the most important public policy questions (Brunk, 2006). If public familiarity with basic scientific concepts and principles has been proposed as essential for effective democratic decision-making (Miller, 1998), public trust and respect in unprecedented novel research initiatives such as biobanks need also to be "built" through bilateral equal partnerships between, for example, scientists and ethnocultural communities who are increasingly playing a pivotal role in the development and sustenance of long term prospective biobank projects, not necessarily for more supportive and favorable attitudes toward science, but for developing research partnerships that facilitate and encourage mutually beneficial and culturally competent research (McGregor, 2007;Rosenthal, 2006).…”

Attitudes of social science students in Israel and Austria towards the Belated Twins scenario—an exploratory study

“…While there is a plethora of public attitudes surveys on the topic of HRC (Barnoy et al, 2006;Calnan et al, 2005;Prainsack et al, 2007;Shepherd et al, 2007;Sturgis et al, 2004;YouGov, 2006), not much attention has been devoted so far to exploring the circumstances under which people would consider to engage in cloning. In addition, many surveys using strictly quantitative methods generate de-contextualized (Wynne, 1992) repetitions of massmedia representations of HRC (for a critical discussion of the latter, see Haran et al, 2007).…”