not mean a patient who is in danger of death but only one who can yet be healed. If, for example, a person has a heart attack and can be healed (as many are from one attack or even two), or if a patient has been rescued from drowning and can be saved with resuscitation(but if no resuscitation is given he will die)- such dying patients, all of whom have a prospect for recovery, must be given the full resources of medicine in the attempt to save them. One may even risk a remedy that might possibly kill them, provided there is a fair chance that the remedy might save them. Thus, the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 27b) says clearly that one may risk otherwise forbidden remedies(e.g., from a heathen healer) if the dying patient has a chance to be cured by the remedy. See the full discussion of this permission to risk death if there is a fair chance to cure in Shevut Yaakov 111.75(Jacob Reischer of Metz, d. 1733).
But in the case under consideration we are not dealing with a dying patient who has a chance for recovery if given the proper medication. We are dealing with a patient with regard to whom all the physicians present, including his own son, agree that he has no chance for recovery. In other words, he is a terminal patient. What, then, are the limits of freedom of action of a physician with a terminal patient?
Is it the physician’s duty to keep this hopeless patient(who is also in all likelihood suffering great pain) alive a little longer, maybe a day or two? Jewish law is quite clear on this question. He is not in duty bound to force him to live a few more days or hours. This law is based on the famous incident in Ketubot 104a. Rabbi Judah the Prince was dying in great suffering. The Rabbis insisted on ceaselessly praying so that he might thus be kept alive a little longer. But his servant-woman (who is often referred to with honor in the Talmud ) threw down an earthen jar from the roof of the house into the midst of the praying Rabbis , in order to stop their prayers so that Rabbi Judah might peacefully die. The Spanish scholar Nissim Gerondi (to Neddrim 40a, top)says that while it is our duty to pray for a sick person that he may recover, there comes a time when we should pray for God ’s mercy that he should die. So, too, Sefer Hasidim(#315-318, edition Frankfurt ),
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