Igros Moshe (YD II #146) This that doctors say that the sign of of whether a person is alive or dead is in the brain In other words if according to their evaluation of a person if his brain is not working properly then he is considered that he is dead even though he is still breathing. You discuss this at length and try to refute this claim. You also say that the brain does not mean the brain stem at the top of the spine which you claim is irrelevant to this issue. I don’t understand your point. Since you are referring to the brain stem at the top of the spine in your discussion of the gemora in Chullin while the doctors are referring to the brain in the head. Furthermore the gemora is describing a case of where the brain stem is detatched while the brain itself remains intact and healthy. If in fact the brain decomposes the animal is a treifa. Similarly if the brain dissolves and flows like water. Even though in general the status of treifa is because eventually the brain cover will be perforated, nevertheless the status of treifa occurs for other conditions both the actual brain and the brain stem. Thus it is possible to say like the doctors if the damage prevents the body from functioning properly it means death. Neverthelesss it is certainly true that the brain stopping from working is not what we define as death since as long as there is breathing he is considered alive. It just means that when the brain stops working it will lead to death which is defined as the cessation of breathing. It is possible that since such a person is still alive and that there are known or yet to be discovered medicines that will restore the function of the brain. It is also possible in this case to pray to G-d to cure him. Thus he has the status of a seriously ill person whose life is in danger but he is not considered dead. If he were dead it would be prohibited to pray for him since it is considered a meaningless and worthless prayer. It is also obvious that anyone who killed such a person is considered a murderer and is subject to the death penalty. All this is because there is no mention in the classic sources of the gemora and poskim that the brain status determines whether the person is considered alive. It is not relevant to claim that nature has changed in this issue because even in Talmudic times the brain functioned then as it does now and all of man’s functioning depended on it. Nevertheless it was not considered that the person was considered dead with the cessation of functioning of the brain and so today we don’t either.
In YD 3 #132 he is quoted (by his son in law) as saying independent breathing , ie if there is no independent respiration, he is ocnsidered dead. R' Tendler also cites a Teshuva of Rav Moshe to Dr SS Bondi, stating the same.
ReplyDeleteRav Tendler is claiming that Rav Moshe either changed his view or didn't know what his view was until he educated him.
DeleteOthers are less charitable in their view of Rav Tendler.
Anyway it is an old and unresolve3d issue
Would it be fair to say that the Gemara is dealing with animals and if they are tried?. Ie nothing about humans.
DeleteThe problem is that people conflate "brain death" with "brain stem death" and forget that if they're wrong about the definition of death, instead of prolonging "chayei sha'ah", they're engaging in "nivul hameis".
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that rabbis aren't scientists and don't understand the scientific method because it wasn't in the gemara. In talmudic times, a cure or treatment was declared to work if it did 3 times. Even if it failed the next 1000 times, it was still considered efficacious because it worked 3 times. So rabbis will hear a story about a guy who was supposed to be dead, got intubated and resuscitated and went on to learn in a kollel somewhere after getting out of hospital and say "See! See! His heaert was beating so he was alive!" And if you point out that for every one guy like that, 99 more didn't come to and just died they ignore you because that one guy survived and that's all the problem they need!
The problem is that poskim.will use what they know about shechita, and then apply it to human biology.
DeleteThat's one aspect. The other is that they don't want someone like Rav tendler (and admirer of Rav Goren) telling them what science is just because he's a professor of biology.
They much rather have bad science from a friendly source than chas v shalom to have the truth from someone who is trained outside of the yeshiva.
A good example - chief rabbi Metzger who is now being investigated for more sexual abuse crimes. Despite the bad character he was known for, he was still backed by hagaon Rav Elyashiv.
KA you love to make things up. Any actual proof for your fantasies?
DeleteThe teshuva you brought above talks about an animal being treifa. Presumably there's not a discussion about humans ?
DeleteGarnel you are wrong!
DeleteDeath is not an objective or scientific thing but a definitional question.
What should be the basis of the definition? the opinion of a random doctor or maybe a random politician or maybe a poet or someone who makes a lot of money?
Should it be the point of actual death or the certainty of near future death?
Is a person a murderer from the moment he fired the bullet at his victim or when the victim's heart stopped beating or when he stopped breathing or when he lost so much blood he can not be revived by the local hospital?
it's true about definition, ie there may be a scientific advance in understanding which goes beyond the Brain stem definition. Or there could be an advance that might be able to revive even some brainstem deaths.
DeleteHowever, I remember there was a published debate between Rav Tender ztl and yibadel b'chaim Rav Bleich shlita.
Rav Bleich was simply throwing concepts of how any teshuvas brought by Tendler are not admissible, and how he prefers the company of Gedolim who agree with him. But his actual scientific understanding was negligible, and he was not able to understand the data or scientific logic that Prof Tendler was bringing. I don't think you use the defence that his arguments are too complex so they don't count.
I can assure you that it is definitively an objective thing. A person is either alive or dead, these is no coexistence between the two. Now, the definition of when that transition happens is the controversy here.
DeleteThe basis of choosing a definition is also controversial. Does one choose a lenient definition with the intention of allow for more organs for transplant? Is one stricter to ensure no one is murdered unintentionally or intentionally?
But if the definition is brain stem death, then taking someone in that condition, sticking him on a ventilator and shouting "He's alive because his heart is beating!" is nivul hameis.
A person cannot be a murdered at the instant he fired the gun. Maybe he'll hit his target, maybe he won't. And even if he hits his target, maybe it's the bullet that'll kill the victim or the victim stumbling into traffic after being shot that kills him. We need an objective point - when is life lost? The loss of heartbeat or the loss of spontaneous respiration?
As for Rav Bleich, shlit"a, he's a brilliant man but he starts his essays with his conclusions and works backwards picking sources that support him while discarding any that oppose his position. He once got into a debate with the head of Halachic Organ Donation and had to accept that, with the cardiac definition of death, if one were behead someone but then instantly tie his carotids to his jugulars, thus closing the circulatory circuit, and then put that body on a ventilator, according to his cardiac definition of death that person would still be alive becaus he had a heartbeat.
OK, so what was his defence of that definition of the headless zombie? Was it "this how halacha defines it, so we have to accept"?
DeleteAgain the issue is not whether death exists it is the question of defining that death has occurred. It doesn't matter that there are different ways to kill some faster than others.
DeleteIt is also the question of what justification we use for the definition. If it has been found that most animals will die from a certain condition can I say all animals that have this condition are dead now. If I can only do organ transplants with that definition should it supersede other definitions especially those based on religious beliefs?
Garnel and KA you are basically saying that a biology professor should have greater authority at establishing the Jewish view of life and death than a mere Talmid chachom utilizing ancient sacred texts.
DeleteI didn't accept mighty Iron heart's original claim that there is a scientific definition of (point) of death.
DeleteI'm saying that if you are going to consult medical experts, then it is worthwhile actually understanding what they say rather than pretending to be an expert when one doesn't know what they are actually saying.
Let me give some examples of science not jiving with traditional sources.
Rambam in his sefer mada gives a grocentric position on the universe. The stars orbit the earth.
In his later book, moreh nevuchim, he gives his own experimental observations of the planetary movements, and how they do not move like he had written earlier in his Yad.
He observed epicycles, where the planets appear to backtrack and do smaller cycles, Which he is unable to explain. It took another 500 years for astronomers to explain why there are these epicycles and the reason being that they are orbiting the sun and not the earth.
Then there's the question of the elements. 2 basic sources that are widely accepted (Rambam, Zohar) repeat the ancients claim that there are only four elements and everything is made from them.
Today we know of 118 elements
If you deny the existence of the hundred + elements, then you shouldn't use a phone or computer or take any modern medicines, drive cars or have modern materials such as plastic, aluminium, etc.
Even the Torah presents gold, silver etc as substances which are in fact elements.
So you can say that Rambam and rashbi/Leon had all the truth in the world but if so you have to live in a cave.
Garnel, your comments here would be appreciated
DeleteThere are places where halakha does not interface with nature and places it does. In those places that it does, scientific knowledge is crucial in understanding how to apply the halakha. For example, there are way more than 4 elements (although to be fair, relabelling elements as states of matter and energy still preserves the 4 thing). We live in a heliocentric solar system at the edge of a galaxy that revolves around the centre of the universe. Any halakhic discussion that denies that because "the Talmud says" or "the Zohar says" is a limited one. The Torah is to be applied to reality and allow us to function within it so we can serve God properly. We don't live on a disc under a giant dome and God doesn't want us to be blinkered fools denying our senses like we're in The Matrix.
DeleteSo yes, professors of biology and medicine have a great deal to explain to us about when death occurs and based on that, we apply the halakha of when to declare someone legally dead.
KA there is a concept of trieifah applied to people
ReplyDeleteIgros Moshe (CM II #73.4) אבל בעצם איכא חלוק גדול לדינא בין טרפות דבהמה לאיסור אכילה למה שנוגע לדיני טרפות דאדם שהוא ליהרג עליו כדאבאר. דהרי כל עניני מחלות ורפואתן אינם דברים קבועים בכל ימות העולם דהרבה דברים טבעיים נתחלפו כמפורש בתוס' מו"ק דף י"א ע"א ד"ה כוורא וכמו כן שייך שישתנו גם במחלות ורפואות, שא"כ בטריפות שמנו
בר"פ אלו טריפות זה הכלל כל שאין כמוה חיה טרפה א"א לפרש שהוא כפי כל זמן וזמן דהא דיני טרפות לאכילה הם קבועים לעולם אלא שהיה כלל על זמן התנאים חכמי המשנה ואולי גם האמוראים חכמי הגמ' ומה שנכלל אז בכלל זה הוא נאסר לעולם מהל"מ =מהלכה למשה מסיני=. ולכן ניחא מה שנאמרו למשה בסיני כל הפרטים כדאמר עולא בחולין דף מ"ג ע"א שמונה מיני טריפות נאמרו לו למשה בסיני ולא סמכה תורה על דעת החכמים שיאמרו איזו הן הדברים העושין שלא תוכל הבהמה לחיות וכדמצינו הרבה דברים בתורה שלא נאמר אלא כלל וסמכה תורה על החכמים שיפרשו הפרטים, אלא הוא משום דמצד הכלל דכל שאין כמוה חיה טרפה לא היו נאסרות כל הטריפות שנשנו אלא רק באותן השנים הרבים שלא היו הבהמות יכולות לחיות,
RDF told me personally [paraphrase]: Chazal are never wrong.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless the onus is on us to render decisions per current science [insofar as it is pertinent]
When the paradox of that statement was challenged,he just reiterated it again.
1) He couldn't come out and say "Yeah, when Chazal said that, they were wrong." He'd have been stripped of his Gadol(tm) status in an instant and Artscroll would have to go back and reissue new edits of any books that previously mentioned him because they've had to erase him
Delete2) There is a fundamental difference between halakha and science. In halakha, Chazal are never wrong and what they said back then is just as true as it is today. But Chazal did not restrict themselves to halakhic statements and outside of halakha, they were stuck using the knowledge base of their times. When it comes to science, what is correct today might be shown to be incorrect tomorrow. Scientists understand this,. They don't say "Those old guys were just wrong." They say "They came to the conclusions they did based on the information they had but now with the additional data we have, we realize that conclusion was incorrect." This implies that if they went back in time and had to work with the older database, they'd also come to the incorrect conclusion but for that time, it was considered correct. Chareidim just don't understand that concept so saying that Chazal were wrong about science because their scientific knowledge was based on a more primitive knowledge base and understanding of the physical universe is considered heresy.
In short, I don't respect Chazal any less or diminish their halakhic authority any more because they thought the world was a disc under a dome. That's what science told them to think and they worked with that. I work with the science of my day, cognizant that one day everything I think is right will be shown to be wrong. It's called humility.
Incorrect but ok.
DeleteChazal expect you to dwell & operate based upon the information of your day.As you should.They communicate(d) through generations on that premise.
But you presume it is arithmetic & &quantitative.
Far from it,but most nebach just aren't capable of cutting through
cf.FS Fitzgerald "A sure sign of.."
Yes, Chazal expect me to dwell and operate based on the information of my day but the fanatics today say that Chazal's information of their day is still the information of my day.
Delete