[Avodah] Brain Death

[Hankman]

RMB wrote:
That is not in contradition to what I said. What I said was that brain
stem death makes the person incapable of prolonged hearbeat. If someone
who has no brain stem activity is on a machine keeping his heart beating,
we can know that what's going on isn't an *independent* heartbeat,
and doesn't qualify as life. Not that the heart is or isn't beating,
but whether the person could ever have a heartbeat of their own doing.

CM responds:
RMF was talking about removing someone from a ventilator, not from a heart-lung machine (I think). The key difference  being that the the former does not artificially provide a heart beat or pumping action whereas the latter not only provides for breathing but also pumps the blood in place of the heart (and also provides oxygenation, CO2 removal etc). Thus when you write "on a machine keeping his heart beating, we can know that what's going on isn't an *independent* heartbeat, and doesn't qualify as life" you seem to be thinking of a heart-lung machine, not the simple ventilator that was the subject of RMF's tshuva and RMT's reference in the video.

So far as consistency in RMT's video, I too had the feeling that there could be issues of his exact meaning, but could not put my finger on it. I assumed it was a fairly subtle point or just my own inability to grasp the subtlety, so not having much time to watch the video again I just let it go.

Kol Tuv

Chaim Manaster
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