IN THEORY:

A hospital in Washington recently asked a judge for permission to stop treating a 12-year-old cancer patient whose parents, both Orthodox Jews, want his life support continued. The family says death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning. Physicians say his brain has died and cannot be revived. Should the hospital be required to keep the boy on life support?

Sadly, I believe that the child has passed away. But yes, I do feel that hospitals should be required to respect the religious views of families, and it was appropriate for this Jewish family to keep their son on life support.

Judaism has a core belief in the value of life and holds that death occurs when a person ceases to breathe. According to Jewish tradition, life is determined by a spiritual soul, which is present in all human beings. As long as someone is breathing, they have a soul. Removing life support from a breathing person essentially amputates the life-source of the soul from the body, thus causing the person to die.

Jewish ethical values forbid this.

Furthermore, measuring a person’s life by the function of the brain is a dangerous endeavor that can lead down a slippery moral slope. For example, consider an infant born with Down’s Syndrome and an “unnatural” brain capacity — are we to say that since the brain does not function in a “normal” fashion, that child is somehow living life to a lesser degree? God forbid that we start to think that way. We must recognize that a person’s value is not dependent upon anything other than its existence; we are all God’s children, and each of us has a soul that is precious and dear.

Rabbi Reuven Mintz

Chabad Jewish Center

Newport Beach

I am loath to speak about a medical situation from afar, as I recall recoiling from former Sen. Bill Frist’s challenge of the diagnosis of Terri Schiavo, which he based on a video he watched.

I would only say that the brain-stem definition of death is the accepted criterion in the Jewish tradition.

When the brain-stem dies, a fact that can be determined with absolute certainty by means of various tests, a person can no longer breathe independently.

Brain-stem death includes respiration death and is irreversible. If a person can no longer breathe due to brain-stem death, the respirator attached to the person is merely pumping air into a dead body. Even if the heart continued to beat, the person is dead. Our brain defines who we are.

Brain death is the legal definition of death in the vast majority of the United States. New York, as far as I know, is the only state that requires medical personnel to make a reasonable effort to notify family members before a determination of brain death, and to make “reasonable accommodation” for the patient’s religious beliefs.

In all other jurisdictions, doctors would be empowered unilaterally to disconnect a patient from life-support mechanisms once that patient meets the legal definition of death. Hospital personnel may defer to the family’s wishes, but there is no duty to do so or to ascertain the wishes.

God has imposed on us the awesome responsibility of defining death. May we do so with wisdom.

Rabbi Mark Miller

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

No. Although it is the wishes of the parents, the boy is dead according to the modern definition of human life. There is no brain activity. He is clinically dead.

There are the medical costs and the anguish also to consider. The boy is done suffering. Let us end the suffering of the parents and allow the grief period to begin. It is worse to keep him alive artificially, as opposed to letting him die peacefully, but then the question becomes when. He might be on machines for years.

Although Judaism forbids active euthanasia, it does permit passive euthanasia in specific circumstances. This is one of them. Our increased abilities to keep people’s bodies functioning through machines and medications make it critical to determine when life support may be withheld or withdrawn. In cases where there is no brain function such as this, Jewish law has already made the Jewish decision for us.

One final reflection, “If you always love the one you lose, you never lose the one you love.”

Rabbi Marc Rubenstein

Temple Isaiah