A MEDICAL EXPERIMENT Walter Jacob

QUESTION: A patient is afflicted with a fatal disease which leads to an unpleasant death. An effort to control it for a short period of time(less than one year) can be made through using drugs which in the final stages have the following side effects: The body skin peels constantly and this is accompanied by pain which no drug will alleviate. Some researchers feel that the full effects of the medicine can only be studied through such human utilization. Should a physician permit his patient to undergo this treatment?(Rabbi Mark Staitman, Pittsburgh PA )*

ANSWER: The general principles governing our question are fully discussed by the modern Israeli authority, A. Abraham(Lev Avraham Vol II pp 75-76; Meiri to San. 84b; 1.Y. Unterman Noam Vol 12pp 5 ff). He stated that no doctor has the right to subject another person to a medical experiment even though such an experiment may eventually help others. The doctor may expose himself/herself to danger(safeq sakana) when she/he attends an infectious patient, as that is her/his duty as a physician, but he cannot ask a patient to submit to danger. The author adds that if the experiment is not dangerous, then the patient may participate in it and that would be reckoned as a mitzvah. Eliezer Waldenberg (Tzitz Eliezer Vol XIII#103; Moses Sofer Hatam Sofer Yoreh Deah#76) disagreed with this view of safe experiments and denied any religious obligation even when there was no danger. At the most, one may permit such participation, but it is in no sense a religious duty (mitzvah).

It is a general rule that every person should avoid danger to life. So, the Talmud (Ber. 3a; Shab. 32a) warned people against walking among ruined buildings as a weak wall may collapse. The Talmud (Hul. 10a) stated that danger to life and health was of greater concern than

, one

teligious prohibitions(hamira saganta meissura). In other words tion.

Must exercise greater care to avoid danger than a religious prohibi

This general rule of avoiding danger is, however, confronted

With the duty of rescuing a fellow human. Discussion of these issues