Kidneys for sale - is it immoral?

Wall Street Journal

Even by New Jersey standards, Thursday's roundup of three mayors, five rabbis and 36 others on charges of money laundering and public corruption was big. But what put this FBI dragnet head and shoulders above the rest are the charges of trafficking in human body parts.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in district court in New Jersey, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn conspired to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. The cost was $160,000 to the recipient of the transplant, of which the donor got $10,000. According to the complaint, Mr. Rosenbaum said he had brokered such sales many times over the past 10 years.

"That it could happen in this country is so shocking," said Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the Red Cross.

No, it isn't. When I needed a kidney several years ago and had no donor in sight, I would have considered doing business with someone like Mr. Rosenbaum. The current law—the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984—gave me little choice. I would be a felon if I compensated a donor who was willing to spare me years of life-draining dialysis and premature death.

The early responses to the New Jersey scandal leave me dismayed, though not surprised. "We really have to crack down," the co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts told MSNBC. That strategy is doomed, of course. It ignores the time-tested fact that efforts to stamp out underground markets either drive corruption further underground or causes it to flourish elsewhere.

The illicit organ trade is booming across the globe. It will only recede when the critical shortage of organs for transplants disappears. The best way to make that happen is to give legitimate incentives to people who might be willing to donate. Instead, I fear that Congress will merely raise the penalties for underground organ sales without simultaneously establishing a legal mechanism to incentivize donors.

Al Gore, then a Tennessee congressman who spearheaded the National Organ Transplant Act, spoke of using "a voucher system or a tax credit to a donor's estate" if "efforts to improve voluntary donation are unsuccessful." After 25 years, it is clear they have been unsuccessful.

More than 80,000 Americans now wait for a kidney, according the United Network for Organ Sharing. Thirteen of them die daily; the rest languish for years on dialysis. The number of donors last year was lower than in 2005, despite decades of work to encourage people to sign donor cards and donate to loved ones. [...]

Why Obamacare is sinking/Krauthammer

JPost

What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.

But you can't fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes.

President Obama premised the need for reform on the claim that medical costs are destroying the economy. True. But now we learn - surprise! - that universal coverage increases costs. The congressional Democrats' health care plans, says the CBO, increase costs in the range of $1 trillion plus.

In response, the president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue neutral. But that's classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable.[...]

Aish HaTorah & Anusim

Aish HaTorah has published yet another article indicating the anusim or marranos are somehow Jews.

From my family I am the only one who "returned" to embrace Judaism. But I choose to focus on the positive things my ancestors did accomplish. I feel the very reason I am today a Jew must be because ultimately they did something right. I have no doubt that it was because of the merit of my ancestors dying "al Kiddush Hashem," sanctifying God's name, that I have the privilege to become a full-fledged Jew.

Conversion - is there age discrimination?

Sara asked

I am a 58 year old candidate for geirus. I have been trying for the last 4 years to convert. Despite the fact I have taken all the courses and have been shomer mitzovs for a number of years - the beis din does not seem very interested in converting me. I have sacrificed a lot to convert - in particular I have lost my connection with my family because I am trying to convert. I would like to know if there are older single women who are having a difficult time converting. I suspect it is because of my age and that if I was young, had money or children, I know I would have a valid conversion already. I also believe that if I was in a relationship with a Jew that I also would have been converted already. I also have observed that those who claim to be Jewish - i.e., have a Jewish father or have think that they have Jewish ancestry are also more readily converted. Is there anything I can do to facilitate the matter? For example can anyone recommend a respected beis din that might be more interested in convering me? I am not concerned whether it is Modern Orthodox or Haredi - I would like to be converted already. Finaly I have a close friend who is also trying to convert. But she says that her mother was actually Jewish but she can't prove it. Are there any services that can help her provide evidence that a beis din would find acceptable? Are there any internet resources that could be used?

Again, thank you for your time,

Informing on Others to a Just Government

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde - [page 43-45 Journal of Halacha]

5. A Jew is knowingly and intentionally cheating on his United States taxes. May one inform on him to the Internal Revenue Service? According to the view of Rabbi Waldenberg, such conduct government.is permitted because informing is not wrong to a just government. According to Rabbi Batzri, such informing is prohibited and makes the informer a pursuer, as it will land the tax cheater in jail, and that is prohibited. According to Rabbi Wosner, although such conduct is not informing, it is prohibited under the rubric of doing gratuitous harm to another,and would only be permitted when the informer stands to benefit concretely from the arrest,94 or when it was one's job to detect such people or when being silent leads to desecration of G-d's name or informing leads to a sanctification of G-d's name, in which case informing is mandatory.95 According to Rabbi Feinstein, such informing is prohibited and makes the informer a pursuer (unless this conduct is one's job, and if he did not do it, someone else would and the person would be detected

94. Such as when the government knows about the cheating and actually suspects the informant of being the cheater. 95. See Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat 266:1. 96. Rabbi Shmelkes' view is hard to determine. Cheating Medicaid or Medicare would seem to be no different than cheating on taxes. Consider a simple case of a doctor who is in a medical practice with another doctor who is forging the first doctor's signature on Medicare reimbursement forms; may the first doctor inform on the second? This case is relatively simple as informing is the only certain way the first doctor can preserve his own Medicare rights. He is informing for direct personal benefit, and thus such conduct would be permitted, even more so since Medicare fraud only very rarely results in jail sentences. A much harder hypothetical involves a Jew who is involved in non-violent criminal activity with a group of Jews and who – alone – is caught by the police. The other members of the criminal ring are not caught and their identities are still unknown. The District Attorney offers this defendant a deal, in which if he reveals the identity of his fellow criminals he will serve no jail time. Otherwise, a full penalty will be imposed. While a full analysis of this matter is quite complex, it is clear that one who informs out of fear of being punished himself anyway).is not generally deemed an informer; Choshen Mishpat 388:2. However, many authorities deem such conduct a sin; see Pitchai Choshen volume 5 Chapter 4, notes 31 and 32 and Chapter 12, paragraph 5 and 27. According to the view of Rabbi Waldenberg, such conduct is permitted as informing is not wrong in a just government. According to Rabbi Batzri, this conduct saves one's life, while endangering the life of others, and is wrong. According to Rabbi Wosner's approach, if this is an area where the authority of the secular law is valid in the eyes of Jewish law, such conduct is permitted. According to Rabbi Feinstein, such informing is prohibited and perhaps even makes the informer a pursuer.

Money laundering case will lower donations to yeshivos

Haaretz

Government sources believe that one of the aftereffects of the massive money-laundering and illegal organ trading case that broke this week will be a sharp decline in donations to Israeli yeshivas, particularly those linked with the ultra-Orthodox party Shas and its spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Three New Jersey mayors and several rabbis were arrested last Thursday in a sweeping federal investigation into political corruption that also uncovered human kidney sales and money laundering from Brooklyn to Israel.

Sources say that the wave of donations received by Israel's Sephardic yeshivas will significantly diminish as the scandal breaks, even by Jewish bodies unrelated to the affair who want to distance themselves from it.

One of the main suspects in the money laundering case is Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Haim, who is a close associate of Rabbi David Yosef, Ovadia Yosef's son. Ben Haim is also very active in the Yechavei Da'at organization, headed by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's family.

David Yosef heads the Yechavei Da'at kolel, an institute for advanced studies of the Talmud and rabbinic literature, in Jerusalem. Ben-Haim has helped elicit donations from rich U.S. Jews for the institution in the past. These donations are expected to cease. [...]

FBI Corruption scandal ITN video