[Avodah] Brain Death

[Yitzchak Schaffer]

On further thought, it sounds like we have to tweak this. Really it's not chazakah of death per se, but of inability to survive, no? Otherwise you would have to say that Chazal had an incorrect chazakah. So then it really would seem to be analogous to treifos, and also implies to me that we would harvest from a living person who cannot survive. But that can't be right... Also then it would clearly be okay to harvest from the brain-stem-dead as they have no potential to survive. 

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Yitzchak Schaffer
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On Jan 18, 2011, at 10:48, David Riceman <driceman at optimum.net> wrote:

> Hazal were not defining the moment of death; they were clarifying that lack of a heart beat establishes a hazakah of death.