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and target cases more dissimilar than similar. The opposing point of view, which accepts the analogy as cogent, must consequently rest upon a basis of medical ignorance or naiveté. The appeal here, in classical rhetorical terms, is to ethos, the speaker’s reliability on the subject as evidence on behalf of his argument.*
4. R. Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg. The author of the multivolume series of responsa entitled 7zitz Eliezer, Rabbi Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg, is a widely recognized authority on matters of medical halakhah.”” In a reply to a 1976 inquiry by Dr. David Meir, the administrator of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem , Waldenberg wrote a lengthy responsum in support of Meir’s suggestion that patients who display no signs of“independent vitality”(chayim atzmi'im or chayut atzmit) be disconnected from the artificial respirator that maintains their breathing.*® In Meir’s description, this category of cases includes patients brought to the emergency room following a major trauma, often a serious traffic accident that has left them with crushed skulls. In the effort to stabilize their vital signs and determine whether their lives can be saved, the patients are immediately placed on respirators. These machines function entirely“from the outside,” pumping oxygen into the lungs, and they can continue to do so almost indefinitely even after the patient has lost all ability to breathe on his own. Only later during the treatment does it become apparent that the patient has no“independent vitality”—“the brain has no control over the inflation of the lung”— and has thus lost any chance for recovery. Meir mentions the ruling of Isserles in Shulchan Arukh Yoreh Deah 339. May we compare the two cases? Are we entitled at this point to define the respirator as an “impediment,” a factor that does nothing but prevent the otherwise imminent death of the patient, and thus to disconnect it?