IS OLD AGE A DISEASE?

according to an agreed-upon scale of social value. If we shape our thinking in accordance with either of those principles, we may reach conclusions that are radically different from those resulting from a discussion dominated by the equality principle. We can determine that, inasmuch as the elderly consume a disproportionate share of society’s health-care resources, it would be preferable from either a purely medical or a socially responsible point of view to redirect those goods and services to persons who can derive a more lasting benefit from them. Or, conversely, we can say that old age is in and of itself not a disease and is therefore not a sufficient justification for the removal or the limitation of medical care.

The problem here is that each of these alternative approaches argues plausibly as a correct reading of Jewish law and the issues of patient selection, medical-resource allocation, and the role of age in the making of these decisions. But perhaps“problem” is too pejorative a description, since plurality lies at the core of Jewish legal thought. Halakhah , that is to say, yields multiple possible answers to many questions, and halakhic history can be narrated as a developing series of responses to the challenges of the environment in which plurality and variety are far more typical than unity.” And if plurality is a central feature of halakhic thinking, as [ have suggested elsewhere,® then when more than one plausibly “correct” legal answer presents itself to the question at hand, there exist no clear-cut rules or formulae for determining with any kind of precision just which answer is better than the other possibilities. Any effort to simply declare the law, to state a conclusion as though there are no other available possibilities—an attempt made here by Rabbi Feinstein—is but an arbitrary attempt to squelch debate, t0 eliminate alternative approaches from our consideration. Although born of the reasonable desire to arrive at the“truth,” it is a move that does nothing but distort the rich and diverse voice of the

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