IS OLD AGE A DISEASE?

cannot treat all patients simultaneously, they should offer treatment first to those whom they believe they can heal. Yet once we begin treatment, even of a dying patient, that treatment cannot be inter­rupted even to treat another person that might thereby be saved.

The third principle, that of qualitative evaluation, has an even more limited range of application. A Jewish physician would resort to this scale of priorities only when neither of the two(or more) persons in need of treatment is a tereifah and only if both(or all) arrive at the hospital simultaneously or if all are located at an equal distance from the physician. If, on the other hand, one patient enjoys either a temporal or spatial precedence, we employ the rule of“first-come, first-served.” And, let us remember, the subject of age is not to be taken into account. If the patient already receiving treatment or closer to the physician is elderly, that is of no rele­vance: he or she enjoys the same right to treatment as the child or

the younger adult. In this sense, Feinstein has constructed out of the halakhic sources a coherent and consistent system, one that offers in broad outline substantial ethical guidance on this most difficult of questions.

ANALYSIS

What Rabbi Feinstein has not done, however, is answer the questions that are likely to be raised about his system. He has ranked one of his three principles of medical resource allocation above the others, yet he does not explain why or on what grounds he sets this priority. This is where his short and declarative literary style serves him so well. By reciting the law as though it is obvious, as though the sources speak with such a unified and unambiguous voice to this topic that it is unnecessary to recount them, he gives

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