[Avodah] Brain Death

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' David Riceman wrote:

> I want to quibble a little.  Hazal were not defining the moment
> of death; they were clarifying that lack of a heart beat
> establishes a hazakah of death.  As proof I'll point out that
> no one permits murdering people who have had heart transplants.

Your proof (if I understand it correctly) works on the presumption that if someone had a heart transplant, then he is already dead, and so it would be allowed to "kill" him. "Ayn k'tila achar k'tila", as it were.

But I believe that this is *not* the case. Torah Jews *do* believe in Techiyas HaMeisim. It *is* possible for one who is dead to live again.

However, please recall what I quoted from Igros Moshe regarding a decapitation. He wrote that such a person is "meis mamash", even though there *is* a method by which he can be brought back to life.

On the other hand, halacha does acknowledge that a person might lack a pulse for a while and not really be dead. We do need to be careful between identifying the things which merely establish a chazaka and the things which truly define death.

(I want to stress that I am in no way qualified to offer opinions about defining life and death. My only point was to suggest problems with RDR's "proof".)

He also asked:

> I noticed that wikipedia defines brain death as "irreversible
> cessation ...."  Is it possible to measure irreversibility, ...

My guess is that it is impossible to prove a negative. How can one be SURE that the cessation is totally irreversible? The most one can possibly say (it seems to me) is that with current medical knowledge and technology, we are unable to reverse it, and we can't even imagine such an ability in the future. - But Who knows?

Akiva Miller

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