[Avodah] Brain Death

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 12:26:02AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: R' Natan Slifkin and R' Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer, in their discussion
: of the halachic view on brain death, seem to be disagreeing about the
: roles of the heart, the kidneys, the mind, and similar topics...

Actually, RYGB is quite clear that his objection is more about what is
halachic process than whether or not RNS got Chazal's understanding of
the roles of the kelayos valeiv vs the moach is correct.

...
: Actually, a definition of "life" is irrelevant. What we need is
: definitions "chayim" and "mavess". "Life" may or may not be the same
: thing as "chayim". If a person is clearly "alive", that does not prove
: that he is "chai". We presume these words to mean the same thing, but
: I think I can prove that they are not:...

Quibble: I don't think "alive" is a specitic enough term to speak about
whether or not they mean the same thing. Thus we can speak of brain death,
heart death, death as defined by the AMA or by US Law, etc...

But I agree with the primary thesis here, and was planning on making
the same point. My way of framing what I believe is the same thesis
is different enough that I'll do so anyway:

The issue is not whether someone is a meis when his heart stops ch"v
or when his brain will never again be able to support consciousness
or never again be able to support his heartbeat. (I think RMTendler's
position is the third -- a kind of brain death that is a derivative of
the classical heart death.)

All science can do is describe in great detail various medical states.
Halakhah tells us which of those states are in the set we call "chai", and
which are in the set we call "meis". The machloqes is in the definition of
the chalos sheim chai. Once we know what quality a physical state must
have (or qualities) to qualify for the chalos sheim, then we can use
medicine to decide how determine whether a given person/body qualifies.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
micha at aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht