Earlier in the week, YWN-ISRAEL reported that an 18-year-old male was killed, the result of an accident. A roof of a balcony in Eilat’s Meridian Hotel collapsed, striking the young man.
The victim, Matan Ben-Simon z”l was killed in the fatal event on Tuesday, only days prior to his enlistment into the IDF. He was to have served as a member of the Givati Brigade.
Chadrei Chareidim reports hours after his petira, his organs were used to save the lives of others. An avreich, a resident of Rechovot, was scheduled to fly to France in the hope of undergoing urgent liver and kidney transplants. 24 hours prior to his scheduled departure he was informed of the organs in Israel.
The family turned to HaGaon HaRav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita who instructed them to remain in Eretz Yisrael. Rav Elimelech Fuehrer was also consulted, directing the family to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital for the surgeries.
A friend of the avreich reports today, Thursday, November 17, 2011, that the transplants were successful.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
huh? Aren’t organ donations ossur when one is dead? That’s what I thought?! Anyone have a clearer understanding with this issue of taking organs from a niftar?
What an immense zechus to save the lives of others!
To the best of my knowledge, one cannot donate organs just for research, or because MAYBE they will eventually get used for someone, BUT if it will clearly be used to save a life it is mutar.
If there is a choleh mutal befaneinu, then it is permissible to donate cadaveric organs from a Jewish niftar to save the life of the recipient.
The reason it is assur to donate organs for research is there is no immediate life-threatening need.
Actually, unless the donor’s heart was still beating at the time that the liver was removed, his liver could not have been viable.
The donor must therefore have been “only” brain dead.
Yet, Rav Chaim permitted it.
Sounds like he must have held that brain death = halachic death, for otherwise this would have been murder.
(Unless you want to say that Rav Chaim would not have permitted the donor family to give the organ in the first place, but held that once it was being removed, one may take advantage of it. Problem is that the donor was being “killed” for the sake of this recipient. It’s not as if the organ is removed and then shopped around. Everything had to be timed, to coordinate with the recipient’s chest being ready.)
Interesting development.
On another website, the person in the chevra kadisha doing the tahara, denied that any organs had been removed & the family was offended when the press questioned them on this, as they hadnt given permission. I guess one cant believe what one reads online or in the press.