The Moral Reasoning of Genetic Dilemmas Amongst Jewish Israeli Undergraduate Students with Different Religious Affiliations and Scientific Backgrounds

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to shed light on the moral reasoning of undergraduate Israeli students towards genetic dilemmas, and on how these are affected by their religious affiliation, by the field they study and by their gender. An open ended questionnaire was distributed among 449 undergraduate students in institutions of higher education in Israel, and their answers were analyzed according to the framework described by Sadler and Zeidler (Science Education, 88(1), 4-27, 2004). They were divided into two major categories: those whose reasoning was based on the consideration of moral consequences (MC), and those who supported their opinion by citing non-consequentialist moral principles (MP). Students' elaborations to questions dealing with values towards genetic testing showed a correlation between the students' religious affiliation and their reasoning, with religious students' elaborations tending to be more principle based than those of secular ones. Overall, the students' elaborations indicate that their main concern is the possibility that their personal genetic information will be exposed, and that their body's personal rights will be violated. We conclude the paper by offering several practical recommendations based on our findings for genetic counseling that is specifically tailored to fit different patients according to their background.

Embracing socioscientific issues-based teaching and decision-making in teacher professional development

“…This resonates with the principle that human life is sacred. Religion or belonging to a religious community is reported to influence participants' decisions (Pope et al, 2017;Sadler & Zeidler, 2005;Siani & Assaraf, 2016;Stern & Kampourakis, 2017). While PTs in our study made more principle-based decisions, this finding contradicts Pope et al's (2017) finding that students who identified themselves as religious used more intuitive reasoning and used rational reasoning to a lesser degree.…”

“…While PTs in our study made more principle-based decisions, this finding contradicts Pope et al's (2017) finding that students who identified themselves as religious used more intuitive reasoning and used rational reasoning to a lesser degree. Siani and Assaraf (2016) reported that college students tended to make decisions based on principles, which is more aligned with our findings. We did not focus on any significant relationship between religious beliefs and abortion in the study since we did not ask PTs whether they identified themselves as religious or not.…”

Teachers’ approaches to genetics teaching mirror their choice of content and avoidance of sensitive issues

“…It has been argued that SSI lie at the very core of genetics education; thus, a substantial amount of research in genetics education has been dedicated to studying and discussing how societal issues can be tackled in genetics education (Sadler & Zeidler, 2004). The central issues include, but are not limited to, genetically modified organisms, cloning, gene editing, stem cell research, genetic disorder testing, and risk assessments through genetic testing (Boerwinkel, Yarden, & Waarlo, 2017;Lederman et al, 2014;Shea, Duncan, & Stephenson, 2014;Siani & Ben-Zvi Assaraf, 2016). In general, these issues have also been included in national or local curricula (Stern & Kampourakis, 2017), but the problems that seem to hinder teaching SSI in genetics are similar to those in the other sciences (Lederman et al, 2014).…”

A Qualitative Look into Israeli Genetic Experts’ Insights Regarding Culturally Competent Genetic Counseling and Recommendations for Its Enhancement

“…Research has shown that comprehension of scientific and genetic information is influenced both by cultural factors (Lee et al 2005) and by genetic knowledge and perceptions (Al-Gazali 2005;Lanie et al 2004;Shaw and Hurst 2008). It has also been shown that religious beliefs, being part of cultural background, affect one's approach to science in general and to genetics in particular (Siani and Assaraf 2016a). For example, Jewish women have been found to be unwilling to receive genetic information from genetic testing because of their religious values, explaining their decision through their religious objections to abortion or their concern over the eugenic aspects of prenatal screening (Remennick 2006).…”