[Avodah] Brain Death

[David Riceman]

RAM:

<<But I do maintain that even if head transplants might someday become 
as successful as today's heart transplants, Rav Moshe's argument will 
still apply, and that one would not be able to argue that successful 
reattachment proves that the body "was not really meis".>>

I suspect that RMF would have reconsidered his opinions about 
decapitation had there been people who were meisim mamash and then 
revived.  In addition to the concerns expressed by RET, see Gittin 61b 
"keivan shemeis adam na'aseh hofshi min hamitzvos".  RMF's arguments are 
not conclusive (he implicitly concedes this in his discussion of Tosafos 
BM 114 on p. 288, the bottom of column 1 and the top of column 2).  I 
think he would have considered the presence of formerly dead people 
halachically unacceptable (of course I have no evidence of his opinions 
on this subject, this is just a wild guess).

RMB:

<<I'm saying we do not have agreement on the halachic definition of 
"alive".

You're saying we do not have agreement on [what] it means to be a living person,
and the question is which indicators are sufficient that we can presume
(chazaqah) that that definition holds.

What's that definition?>>

I'm saying "alive" and "dead" are primitive concepts which don't need definitions.  Most actual cases are clear, but some important cases are not, and it is for some of those that we rely on hazakos.

Incidentally the distinction between "alive" and "[what] it means to be a living person" is too subtle for me.  Can you explain it?


RMB:
<<I was suggesting that R' Tendler's and the CR's position is based on

defining life in terms of the ability to have a self-caused heartbeat,
whereas the majority opinion is based on the ability to have a hea[r]tbeat,
regardless of what is making it beat.>>

Let's consider another case.  If a married man falls into mayim sheyeish lahem sof and remains there for, say, 15 minutes, his wife may remarry.  I would explain that falling and remaining in water creates a hazakah that the man is dead.

RMB, as I understand him (henceforth RMBAIUH), would take that as an alternative definition of death (why is it any worse than no heartbeat?).

What if he descends in a submarine, or wearing a wetsuit and an oxygen tank? I would say, as in the case of heart surgery, no hazakah has been created because of these special circumstances.  But if this is another definition of death, RMBAIUH would have to contend that this guy is dead and his wife may remarry, and we have returned to my comment on RAM above.

In short, the logical leap from "we have no definition of death" to "therefore when Hazal say X about death they must be defining it" is questionable at best.

David Riceman