END-STAGE EUTHANASIA Some Other Considerations

Walter Jacob

Death and euthanasia bring us face to face with some of the basic problems of modern medical ethics. The advances in medical technology have caused problems for the patient and family, the health care institution and its personnel, as well as the government. The matter, however, goes far beyond medical technology and its advances.

Judaism has always been a highly optimistic religion with a love of life which permeates every aspect of it. That positive view has come from the creation story with its continuous refrain"and it was good." For human life, the statement went even further,"and it was very good." Life had supreme value and was to be sustained even through the violation of other Divine commandments. This thought was paramount and all commandments except those which forbade murder, incest, and idolatry could be voided to save a human life.! This has meant that any thought of killing another person even for some supposed benefit to that person was abhorrent.’

Euthanasia has, therefore, been completely foreign to Judaism . The stance of Judaism was absolutely clear in the interpretion of the early rabbinic literature, the later codes and the subsequent responsa. We continue to take this as our normative position. We reject efforts to eliminate individuals with genetic defects. The only possible exception to this rule may be end-stage euthanasia which we wish to discuss in this essay.

A variety of issues demand our attention. A new light has been shed on the traditional way of looking at euthanasia by my colleagues Peter Knobel and Leonard Kravitz in their papers. As I have also shown elsewhere, the Orthodox hesitation about end-stage euthanasia has been established on a weak and largely anecdotal foundation. Furthermore two of the tales normally used actually point in a different direction.