IS OLD AGE A DISEASE?

medical technologies are out of place; they cease to be medicine, and they are forbidden as chabalah, as needless damage to the body." If medicine is the commandment to heal, to save life, it is plausible to conclude that in a case such as the one Feinstein addresses in his first responsum, we ought to give priority to the patient for whom we can truly do“medicine,” whose life we can actually save. If we cannot treat both patients at the same time, we ought to invest our medical resources in such a way that we will more certainly fulfill the mitzvah of piku’ah nefesh.

The second criterion we find in Rabbi Feinstein’s thinking can be called the principle of equality: the religious and moral commitment to the belief that each human life is infinitely precious in God ’s sight and that we are accordingly forbidden to decide that some lives are more worth saving than others. The classic rabbinic statements of this position can be found in two talmudic passages. The first, B. Sanhedrin 74a and its parallels, conveys the ruling that, although the preservation of one’s life is considered a supreme Toraitic value, one is nonetheless forbidden to save one’s own life by committing murder. Who are you, asks an amoraic sage, to say that your blood is any“redder” than that of the one you intend to kill? Perhaps his blood is“redder” than yours." The converse conclusion is also implied in this judgment: who is to say that one’s own blood is any less“red” than another’s?

This theme is predominant in the second talmudic passage, B. Bava Metzia 62a, which recounts the case of two travelers wandering in the desert, one of whom possesses a container that holds just enough water to enable one—but not both—travelers to reach civilization. Ben Petura rules that the traveler that holds the water must share it with his fellow. Although this means that both

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