DETERMINING DEATH IN JEWISH LAW

Rabbi Shlomo Goren claims that the above responsum by the Hatam Sofer establishes only one criterion for death: the cessation of breathing."The other two are merely an expression of the condition of the irreversible cessation of breathing, namely brain death, including the brain stem. As we shall see, some contemporary rabbinic scholars disagree with this interpretation resulting in a severe halakhic controversy.

SCHOLARLY VIEWS OF THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE AND DEATH

Professors of medicine and law have interpreted the process of determining death as more than a medical or legal issue.

A foremost legal savant declared:"In reconsidering the definition of death, the medical profession has determined that death is a process rather than an event. Recent medical achievements in artificially prolonging life have led physicians to conclude that patients reach a stage in the process of dying beyond which no chance for recovery exists. The cessation of total brain function known as brain death, is widely accepted as constituting an irreversible stage in the process of dying beyond which all other organs imminently will cease to function.""

Scholars of the Journal of the American Medical Association stated:

The principal reason for deciding that a person is dead should be based on a fundamental understanding of the nature of man... Without a brain, the body becomes the convenient medium in which the energy-requiring states of organs run down and the organs decay. These residual ­activities(of organs without nervous system influence) do not confer an iota of humanity or personality. Thus in the circumstance of brain death neither a human being nor a person any longer exists... Almost all segments of

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