[Avodah] taker but not giver?

[Joel Rich]

I heard an interesting comment from a Rabbi during a recent shiur. He
stated that he had been contacted by an international bone marrow registry
telling him that he was a partial match and to come down for further
testing. He consulted with a number of poskim and they told him he was not
required to get tested. He told one posek that if the recipient was an frum
Jew, that he would do it. The posek told him, very good. The general
response from the poskim was based on the fact that since the majority of
likely recipients were not Jewish, he didn’t have to do it. (I’m guessing
due to lo taamod only being for Jews)

I suppose we have a similar ethical question with heart transplants – if we
won’t donate, but will take. It seems to me in this case there’s an
additional halachic issue. It appears to me that if there’s a partial
match, you can’t look at the general population of registrants and ask
what’s the likelihood the person is Jewish, since the partial match gives
us some further information and we would have to use Bayesian statistics to
determine whether in fact the assumption that the majority of likely
matches were not Jewish should be updated for the additional information
that there is a partial match. Any thoughts?

KT
Joel Rich
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