PETER KNOBEL

43."An individual who has sustained irreversible loss of consciousness is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with acceptable medical standards. However, no individual shall be considered dead based on irreversible loss of consciousness if he or she, while competent, has explicitly asked to be pronounced dead based on irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain or based on irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions. Unless an individual has, while competent, selected one of these definitions of death, the legal guardian or next of kin (in that order) may do so. The definition selected by the individual legal guardian or next of kin shall serve as the definition of death for all legal purposes.” Veatch,"The Impending Collapse of the Whole-Brain Definition of Death" Hastings Center Report,# 23, 1993, p.23.

44. See the discussions by both Dorff and Sinclair for all of the relevant citations and ethical distinctions.

45. A person on the deathbed(goses) is like the living in every regard.. One does not bind his cheeks or stop his orifices... Ones does not save him or wash him.. until the moment he dies. Whoever touches and moves him, that one commits murder. Rabbi Meir would compare him to a candle which is flickering; should a person touchit, it immediately goes out.(Shukhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 339.1 as cited by Avram Israel Reisner"A Halakhic Ethics of Care for the Terminally Ill", Conservative Judaism , Vol. 40,#3, 1991, p. 56.

46. Hilkhot Rozeah 2.8; Sinclair Op. Cit. p.20 47. Sinclair Op. Cit. p.21.

48. 1 Samuel 31:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel ; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines , and fell slain on Mount Gilbo’a. And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan and Abin’adab and Mal’chishu’a, the sons of Saul . The battle pressed hard upon Saul , and the archers found him; and he was badly wounded by the archers. Then Saul said to his armor-bearer,"Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and make sport of me." But his armor-bearer would not; for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword, and fell upon it. And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword, and died with him. Thus Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, on the same day together. And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their cities and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them. On the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilbo’a. And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news to their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the temple of Ash’taroth; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.

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