SUICIDE, ASSISTED SUICIDE, ACTIVE EUTHANASIA

The most recent arguments concerning the definition of death ask whether brain death criteria, as generally accepted in the medical profession, are adequate.” Some have argued that a persistent vegetative state constitutes death and, therefore, the removal of life support does not constitute killing. Robert M. Veatch, in a provocative article, raises significant questions about the"whole brain definition of death” and suggests a new definition of death which allows for individuals to choose their definition of death.®

In general, discussions of end stage medical care in Judaism have centered around the concept of the goses, the immediately dying patient i.e. moribund patients expected to die within 72 hours.* A goses is fully alive and nothing can be done to hasten death. Hastening the death of a goses is murder.” More recently Daniel Sinclair and Elliot Dorff have used the concept of the terefah as a category to discuss end stage medical care.

The classical definition is provided by Maimonides in reaction to the exemption of the killer of a rerafah. The person is not liable to capital punishment on the grounds that the victim is‘already dead’. Maimonides definition runs as follows:‘It is know for certain that he had a fatal organic disease and physicians say that his disease is incurable by human agency and that he would have died of it even it he had not been killed in another way..*

It is clear that Maimonides places an incurably ill person into another category. In some sense that person’s life is compromised and his/her death by human hands is not murder.

The fundamental concept in the definition of a human terefah is, therefore, the inevitability of death” in contrast to the goses who is alive in every respect. The person’s biography therefore is crucial. Let us consider the case of the death of King Saul.** When mortally wounded in battle he requests that his armor-bearer kill him, but the

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