[Avodah] Is there any issur here al pi halacha? - New York man pleads guilty to selling Israeli human organs

[Zev Sero]

On 2/11/2011 5:48 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> This is why I focused the question not on the buyer, but on the broker.
> The broker's position is more like a health care provider or the public
> kupah, who have halakhos of triage

The public kupah has these rules.  I don't see why a private broker
should be bound by them.  He is acting for himself, or for his client,
not for the public at large.


On 2/11/2011 8:58 AM, Joseph C. Kaplan wrote:
> RZS responded similarly; that this is the way of the world -- the rich
> have it better. And that's true. Bt the question I raise is whether that
> has to be the case. And thus, even if it is true that "every attempt to
> change it has failed," why does that stop us from trying to change again
> if that would be a better, fairer, more just and ethical way of acting.

Because the way it is is right and just.  Hashem morish uma`ashir.
That's why Rebbi honoured the rich -- if Hashem saw fit to bestow riches
on them then they deserve honour.  It is also right and just for the rich
to recognise where their money came from, and to be generous with it; but
it's not as if it doesn't really belong to them, and there's something
wrong with them spending it first on themselves.  On the contrary, since
they got it from Hashem and not from other people, nobody else has any
claim on it at all.  The `aniyim whom they help "mishulchan gavoah ka-zachu".

> And organ transplant is an area where maybe we can change it because it
> is new so we have some control over how it is developing.  We've set up
>  a system in the US that seems to be better; why defend someone who
> violated it.

Because you have no right to impose such a system on people who don't
consent to it.  The organs don't belong to you, and you have no right
to dictate who should get them and on what terms.  Hashem gave my organs
to me, not to you, and only I can decide whether to give them to someone
else, and for what reason.  If I decide to do it for money, that's my
business, and if you try to interfere by force then you are no better
than a highwayman.


On 2/11/2011 12:08 PM, Rich, Joel wrote:
> It's not so clear to me that "ownership" is the issue. For example, a
> poor talmid chacham/kohain and a wealthy woman/convert/am haaretz are
> drowning and you can only save one, the wealthy one offers a million
> dollars to save them. Can you do halachically do that?

Not only that, but even if nobody is offering money and you are donating
your water, you can give it to whomever you like. "Ve'ish es kodoshov lo
yihyu".  There are no rules.  How much more so that which you are not
makdish but are selling.  (Selling the water for a profit may reduce
your mitzvah but it doesn't erase it.  The person who goes fishing on
Shabbos and quite by accident happens to save a person still gets the
credit for hatzolas nefashos, i.e. his intended avera turns into a mitzvah.)

-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
zev at sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
		                            - Yitzchak Rabin