Aviad Raz

• Professor
• Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

As one of the industry leaders in the field of alternative proteins, Israel provides an interesting and important test case for examining explicit and implicit agendas in the professional and public debate regarding sustainable pathways for alternative proteins. Based on in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in the Israeli food-tech ecosystem a...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), has changed the experience of pregnancy, prenatal care and responsibilities in Israel and Germany in different ways. These differences reflect the countries' historical legacies, medico-legal policies, normative and cultural identities. Building on this observation, the contributor...

The prenatal genetic testing arena has witnessed great changes over the past decades and has been the focus of extensive discussion of its ethical, legal, and social implications. Germany and Israel were previously known for strongly contrasting regulations and attitudes of both professionals and laypeople towards genetic testing. Based on qualitat...

The Haredi (ultraorthodox Jewish) community in Israel presents distinct views on disability and prenatal testing compared to the pro-testing attitudes of the Israeli general public. Based on qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Haredi parents of children with Down syndrome, this study explores the interplay between their personal...

DNA collection raises ethical, legal, and social issues around privacy, consent, participatory science, benefits and risks, biodata governance, and, ultimately, trust. While there is a consensus that DNA biobanks’ success depends on public trust, more evidence is needed regarding the determinants, production, and preservation of such trust. We draw...

Definition The routinization of prenatal diagnosis is the source of bioethical and policy debates regarding choice, autonomy, access, and protection. To understand these debates in the context of cultural diversity and moral pluralism, we compare Israel and Germany, focusing on two recent repro-genetic “hot spots” of such policy-making at the begin...

Non-profit organisations (NPOs) have increased in numbers and importance, providing support, services and advocacy. However, who non-profits actually represent is still an open question. To provide an empirical basis for scrutinising how the representational roles of autism advocacy NPOs change (or not) as they develop, in this article we focus on...

23andMe not only sells genetic testing but also uses customer data in its R&D activities and commercial partnerships. This raises questions about transparency and informed consent. Based on a online survey conducted in 2017-18, we examine attitudes of 368 customers of 23andMe toward the company's use of their data. Our findings point at divides in...

Autism entails impression management, including social camouflaging, under conditions of conflict and stigma, with reduced ability to perform such social interaction as well as an increased toll that accompanies it. To examine the meanings of impression management and social camouflaging from the point-of-view of autistic people, we conducted a par...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Due to its early utilization and increasing ability to provide genetic information, non‐invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) has reinforced social and bioethical quandaries concerning prenatal genetics. This paper presents exploratory findings based on 20 semi‐structured interviews conducted in 2017–2019 with Israeli parents of children with Down syn...

Objectives: We delineate in this article a shift from the "traditional" technologies of karyotyping in PND to the current phase of advanced genetic technologies including non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) and whole-exome sequencing (WES) with their higher detection rate and related abundance of uncertain d...

Looking at the new and often disputed science of epigenetics, we examined the challenges faced by scientists when they communicate scientific research to the public. We focused on the use of metaphors to illustrate notions of epigenetics and genetics. We studied the “encoding” by epigeneticists and “decoding” in focus groups with diverse background...

This study examines the interface between newborn screening and prenatal diagnosis from the point-of-view of parents of screen-positive children. Many conditions covered by newborn screening represent classic (autosomal recessive) Mendelian disorders. Parents of screen-positive infants therefore often come to learn that they are carriers of the dis...

Newborn Screening provides a critical case-study for the cross-cultural analysis of globalizing medical technologies. While the evidence-base that informs decisions of which conditions to screen is internationally accepted, the number of disorders screened for varies widely between countries. In this article, we explore the different ‘gene worlds’...

This paper analyses self-declared aims and representation of dementia patient organizations and advocacy groups (POs) in relation to two recent up- heavals: the critique of social stigmatization and bio- medical research focusing on prediction. Based on twenty-six semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016–2017 with members, service recipients, a...

Healthcare collectives, such as patient organizations, advocacy groups, disability organizations, professional associations, industry advocates, social movements, and health consumer organizations have been increasingly involved in healthcare policymaking. Such collectives are based on the idea that individual interests can be aggregated into colle...

This study focuses on patterns of communication and interaction for peer support, which develop among parents of screen-positive children in the socio-medical space created by the diagnostic uncertainty of newborn screening, the limitations of established patient support groups and the daily challenges of screen-positive care management. Based on s...

Purpose Population BRCA1/BRCA2 screening identifies carriers irrespective of family history, yet this information is actionable for relatives. We examined familial communication rates and cascade testing in the screening setting and assessed sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors. Methods Participants in a BRCA1/BRCA2 screening study of heal...

The important work done by various associations of and for people with disabilities is legitimated by their claim for collective representation. However, there is little empirical research that examines the organizational basis for such claims. We focus on patient/disability advocacy associations that illustrate a split of representation between or...

This chapter looks at public health genetics services in Israel as a network of people, resources, and institutions whose cooperative activity produces current genetic knowledge and practice. This chapter will situate the production of genetics services within relevant political, cultural, and professional contexts, looking at the social factors th...

Purpose Based on the human resources (HR) role framework (Conner and Ulrich, 1996), the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore why HR practitioners differ in their strategic partner role positioning. The present study suggests and tests a descriptive model regarding occupational and organizational characteristics associated with strategic...

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish (haredi) women in Israel, who are traditionally expected to be both mothers and breadwinners so as to allow their husbands to immerse themselves in religious studies, are recently entering the high-tech labour market in both segregated and assimilate organizations. This segmented labour market allows the constructed and inters...

To explore how cultural beliefs are reflected in different popular views of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for human leukocyte antigen match (popularly known as "savior siblings"), we compare the reception and interpretations, in Germany and Israel, of the novel/film My Sister's Keeper. Qualitative analysis of reviews, commentaries and posts is...

Background End-of-life decision making constitutes a major challenge for bioethical deliberation and political governance in modern democracies: On the one hand, it touches upon fundamental convictions about life, death, and the human condition. On the other, it is deeply rooted in religious traditions and historical experiences and thus shows grea...

Purpose: Population screening of three common BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations in Ashkenazi Jews (AJ) apparently fulfills screening criteria. We compared streamlined BRCA screening via self-referral with proactive recruitment in medical settings. Methods: Unaffected AJ, age ≥25 years without known familial mutations, were either self-referred or recruiter-...

Background The high number of IVF procedures performed in Israel has had an unforeseen consequence: accumulation of large amounts of surplus frozen embryos. After five years that the frozen embryos are kept for free, patients need to make an embryo disposition decision. One option is donation for research. The donation rate in Israel is very low. O...

Purpose: Population screening for BRCA1/BRCA2. mutations is being considered for Ashkenazi Jews (AJ) because 2.5% carry recurrent deleterious mutations and effective cancer prevention exists. This study aimed to provide a qualitative focus on perspectives of individuals, particularly carriers, who were tested through a screening trial. In this tri...

Focusing on lay moralities is normatively justified by embedding bioethics in a political-philosophical framework of participation and deliberation. A major methodological and meta-ethical challenge remains regarding how empirical research can systematically inform normative bioethics. The concepts of being affected, responsibility and risk, are in...

National differences in end of life regulation are mirrored only partly in the attitudes of lay persons and influenced by the religious views and personal experiences of those being affected. Based on respect for autonomy, lay persons in non-religious groups in both countries argue for possibilities of euthanasia in severe cases, but caution agains...

When people engage in moral discourse, this involves questioning and rationalizing underlying assumptions. Qualitative analysis of these shared questions and assumptions can lead to their underpinning “cultural scripts”. We describe this methodology in the context of focus group discussions as a form of “mini” public discourse. By examining lay, af...

Socio-empirically informed, theoretically reflective, and comparative studies of lay moralities and expert bioethics can reveal how individual meanings and cultural scripts are closely interwoven. Abstract norms, social practices, and personal experiences are balanced, adjusted and weighed against each other. Moreover, social science, ethics and po...

In this integrative chapter we identify three different levels of responsibility and risks prevailing in lay narratives of bioethical dilemmas. These narratives are embedded within individual, familial and societal levels of responsibility. Moreover, they are linked to different levels of risks. This finding points to the planning aspect in bioethi...

The task of an empirically-grounded exploration of a culturally embedded bioethics is introduced against the backdrop of several mainstream approaches to bioethics. Secondly, we introduce the comparative context of Germany and Israel as well as the relevance of comparing moral deliberation of lay groups and the public with expert discourses. These...

In the context of genetic testing and screening, Germany and Israel generally represent contrasting legal regulations and professional outlooks, particularly in relation to reproductive, prenatal genetic testing and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This chapter locates the national policies regarding adult genetic testing against their cul...

The comparison of biomedical expert discourse in Germany and Israel reveals interesting differences in how patients’ autonomy and doctors’ duties are morally and legally related to each other with respect to the withholding and withdrawing of medical treatment in end-of-life situations. While Israel is more restrictive in relation to Germany regard...

This chapter extends the analysis of medico-legal policies and expert bioethical discourses by adding the dimension of lay moralities, examining the attitudes and arguments of lay people and assessing differences and similarities based on cultural grammars as well as personal experience. Focus groups with lay people (both affected and not affected)...

This book is a comprehensive, empirically-grounded exploration of the relationship between bioethics, culture, and the perspective of being affected. It provides a new outlook on how complex “bioethical” issues become questions of everyday life. The authors focus on two contexts, genetic testing and end-of-life care, to locate and demonstrate emerg...

National legislation, as well as arguments of experts, in Germany and Israel represent opposite regulatory approaches and positions in bioethical debates concerning end-of-life care. This study analyzes how these positions are mirrored in the attitudes of laypeople and influenced by the religious views and personal experiences of those affected. We...

Growing evidence suggest that drip irrigation is superior to traditional irrigation in terms of yield quantity and quality, water saving, and labour costs. The introduction of drip systems can thus have far-reaching implications for socioeconomic change, particularly among farmers in developing countries. Due to various constraints-such as the fina...

מחקר זה (Mixed Method Research) בדק את השלכות ניהול הרגשות על תחושת הלחץ השחיקה ועל שביעות הרצון בעבודה של נציגי שירות בשני מרכזי שירות טלפונים של ארגון פיננסי. האחד נמצא באזור המרכז בו מועסקים בעיקר סטודנטים וסטודנטיות בשנות ה- 20 לחייהם והשני בעיר חרדית בו מועסקות נשים חרדיות בלבד בגילאי ה 20-30. ממצאי המחקר מראים כי למשחק השטוח השלכות שליליות של...

Patient organizations are increasingly involved in national and international bioethical debates and health policy deliberations. In order to examine how and to what extent cultural factors and organizational contexts influence the positions of patient organizations, this study compares the positions of German and Israeli patient organizations (POs...

This article reports on attitudes of modern-religious Ashkenazi Jewish adults in Israel toward anonymous carrier matching for severe monogenic diseases by Dor Yesharim (the ultra-orthodox organization) and open individual carrier testing (through a medical center), examining how this important choice is being informed, communicated, made, and refle...

'Biological' and 'human' life or 'personhood' are not necessarily identical. While the Catholic Church does not separate the two, concluding that human life commences at conception, Judaism endows the fetus with personhood gradually throughout the pregnancy. Gradualism is also reflected in many Western abortion laws that prohibit 'late abortion'. I...

The moral discourse surrounding end-of-life (EoL) decisions is highly complex, and a comparison of Germany and Israel can highlight the impact of cultural factors. The comparison shows interesting differences in how patient's autonomy and doctor's duties are morally and legally related to each other with respect to the withholding and withdrawing o...

End-of-life (EoL) decisions concerning euthanasia, stopping life-support machines, or handling advance directives are very complex and highly disputed in industrialized, democratic countries. A main controversy is how to balance the patients autonomy and right to self-determination with the doctors duty to save life and the value of life as such. T...

Nazi eugenics is one of the main historical events influencing current popular as well as scholarly discussions of reproductive genetics. This influence, however, is open to different interpretations and social constructions. Based on 44 open interviews with Israeli and German genetic counselors, conducted in 2000–2003, our findings suggest that wh...

The professional and institutional responsibility for handling genetic knowledge is well discussed; less attention has been paid to how lay people and particularly people who are affected by genetic diseases perceive and frame such responsibilities. In this exploratory study we qualitatively examine the attitudes of lay people, patients and relativ...

The impetus for this review is the intriguing realisation that eugenics, viewed as dystopian and authoritarian in most of the 20th century, is in the process of being reinterpreted today--in the context of reproductive genetics--as utopian and liberal. This review offers an analytical framework for mapping the growing literature on this subject in...

Cross-cultural organizational development and change (OD&C) is often studied from a macro perspective, which either assumes the universal transferability of methods developed in the West or criticizes this premise. This study examines cross-cultural OD&C as an arena for negotiating a “workplace culture” that mediates between global corporate cultur...

As more genes and mutations are identified in diseases for which particular populations are at increased risk, it is becoming more important to address the social interface between communities and carrier screening. While disproportionately targeted in genetic research, the Orthodox Jewish community often shies away, due to social and religious con...

Dor Yeshorim, the premarital carrier testing program designed and implemented by the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, has succeeded in generating high uptake thus considerably reducing the number of children born with genetic diseases. Those critical of the program stress its directive and coercive features which are said to compromise personal aut...

Kurosawa's career spanned 50 years, during which he became the most celebrated Japanese film director in the West. Critical acclaim has focused, in the West and in his native country, on the films he produced during the 1950s and 1960s--that is, the middle part of his long career--whereas reception of his late works has ranged from ambivalence to o...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the formation of CoPs (communities of practice) in three call centres of cellular communication operating companies in Israel. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on a qualitative methodology including observations, interviews and textual analysis. Findings In all three call...

This case study examines the management of frontline employees in an Israeli call centre by focusing on the organisational rhetoric of ‘professionalism’ and the implementation of integrative human resource practices (debriefing, covert call monitoring, information and technology software, and a monthly bonus). This culture is critically explored as...

To explore the ways in which biomedical culture responds to the new curricular addition of communication skills training, we observed activities related to the communication skills training of a class of 70 first-year medical students in an Israeli medical school during 2002-3. In addition, focus groups were conducted with medical students (n = 210...

Seen from a perspective of symbolic interaction and social constructivism, organizational learning is a practical accomplishment that takes place among and through other organizational members. This study sets out to explore the social construction of organizational learning by examining the responses of members to a management-imposed teaching cur...

Attitudes of young Bedouin adults (26 men and 23 women) in Israel towards cousin marriage, a traditional marriage pattern in the Bedouin society, were investigated. A Bedouin clan (population 3,400) with a high rate of cousin marriage and consanguinity was targeted for this study. Thirty-seven percent of the respondents expressed unconditional posi...

This paper considers the disability rights critique of genetic testing in the context of different communities and the issue of nondirectiveness. Despite the wide usage of genetic diagnosis in Israel, no public debate has emerged there concerning disability rights and prenatal testing. The common attitude that emerged from interviews with Israeli r...

To situate the North American, and to some extent, European debate regarding disability rights and prenatal diagnosis in a social and cross-cultural context, this pilot study explored the views of leaders of organizations for disability rights and support groups for people with genetic conditions in Israel, where a similar debate has not emerged. U...

This article examines the responses of an Arab Bedouin minority group in Israel to a genetic counseling program for spouse selection. While health professionals designed the program to fit local norms such as consanguinity, matchmaking, and the Muslim ban on abortion, for the Bedouin, it also meant the medicalization of marriage arrangements and fa...

Premarital carrier matching is a form of genetic counselling in which two individuals are told, if both are carriers, that they have a 25% risk at each pregnancy of having a child affected by the disease for which they were tested. If only one individual is a carrier this information is not disclosed. This scheme is offered to a consanguineous Bedo...

I examine the piloting of an educational tool - an Arabic-speaking documentary film entitled 'Aysha' - in a Bedouin community in Israel, where consanguinity increases the prevalence of genetic diseases. Textual analysis of the film's changing script versions demonstrates how the dilemma of modern biomedical goals and local Bedouin tradition was rec...

To evaluate the effects of ethnicity, culture, and counseling style on the interpretation of nondirectiveness in genetic counseling, a questionnaire containing premarital and prenatal case vignettes in two versions (pessimistic/optimistic) was administered to 281 Jewish and 133 Bedouin respondents. The first study population was comprised of Jewish...

To evaluate the effects of ethnicity, culture, and counseling style on the interpretation of nondirectiveness in genetic counseling, a questionnaire containing premarital and prenatal case vignettes in two versions (pessimistic/optimistic) was administered to 281 Jewish and 133 Bedouin respondents. The first study population was comprised of Jewish...

Este artículo trata sobre un estudio comparativo entre las culturas y estilos organizacionales del Japón y de Estados Unidos. Establece algunas dicotomías que definen la relación entre ambos países, tales como el global vs local, público y privado, racional o emocional, paternalismo vs. Confianza mutua, colectivismo vs. Individualismo, emociones vs...

The Bedouins of the Negev (Southern part of Israel) are a community at increased risk for genetic diseases and congenital anomalies as a result of frequent consanguinity (particularly patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage) and underutilization of prenatal genetic tests due to a Muslim ban on abortion. To assess the knowledge and attitudes of Bedoui...

This paper examines a premarital genetics program focusing on congenital deafness, conducted in Israel with a Bedouin minority group characterized by consanguinity, a religious ban on abortion, and high prevalence of genetic diseases. Building on interviews with counselors and counselees as well as observations of the interactions between them, the...

Based on fieldwork in a central bus station in Israel, this article focuses on the theme of life stories as an analytical venue into the social world of beggars. Beggars were found to have three statuses, or symbolic types: the handicapped, the prostitute, and the mad. The ethnography describes the interplay between the status and life stories of b...

Based on a fieldwork in a central bus station in Israel, this study offers a novel consideration of the symbolic interactions underlying processes of communication, social exchange, and status attainment among beggars. The case study presents a possible alternative to sociological analyses of beggary as “deviant activity” by drawing upon the constr...