in the well developed discussions of the Shabbat regulations and their prohibition of every conceivable form of labor. Any act connected with saving a human life, or rescuing someone from a life-threatening danger was excluded(Yoma 85b; Tur and Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 329.3).> All such actions were obligatory. These and other parallel statements are equally applicable to modern universal medical care.
MEDICAL INTERVENTION
The effort to preserve and improve human life has always included medical care. As life is a divine gift, it must be helped in every way possible. The best medical care available was always seen as a personal obligation. Such efforts were praised through the millennia, included in every compendium of the halakhah from early times onward and rarely questioned, so the apocryphal Book
of Ben Sirach devotes the entire chapter thirty-eight to this theme. When the tradition discussed experimental treatments, it weighed the potential benefit of the treatment against the sakanah(danger). Whichever was more likely to save a life was not only permitted, but encouraged(Ber 3a; Shab 32a; Hul 10a; Yad Hil. Hovel Umazik 5:1). These discussions continued through the centuries and have set the pattern for contemporary Jewish physicians.
The value of human life is paramount, and the demand was that everything that could be done to sustain it, should be undertaken. The ability to heal may have been considered a divine gift, but its exercise was in human hands. It was also a human task to define its limits and to guarantee that the fruits of such efforts were widely available and that was relatively easy with the simple health care which existed in earlier times.
Health care remained an individual matter with some help