As the result of a new organ donation policy (“opt out”) adopted in France, almost all of the rabbis of France recently voiced their sweeping opposition to organ donation. There are more than 500,000 Jews living in France.
In order to counter this latest development HODS (Halachic Organ Donor Society) is arranging an educational evening program in Paris that will include a French neurologist who will explain the finality of brain death.
A local transplant coordinator will be in the audience to answer any practical questions as well.
Rabbi Professor Avraham Steinberg, MD of Yerushalayim will also be participating in the event to explain halachic support for organ donation. (There will be simultaneous translation from Hebrew to French.)
Since most Jews in France are Sephardic, HODS will also be translating its Sephardic brochure into French. This brochure shows major Sephardic poskim who support organ donation such as HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef ZT”L and HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Eliyahu ZT”L.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
What many people do not realize is that in order to donate organs from a so called cadaver,the cadaver must still be breathing and the cadaver heart must still be beating. It is a very big chiddush to say that such a person is considered dead and a cadaver and that you can go and cut their heart out and the like. Intuitively the person is still alive and you are murdering them by cutting out their organs. I think the name Halachik organ donation society is very misleading. The whole notion of “Brain Death” was invented in order to enable the multi billion dollar organ donor industry to develop. Without “Brain Death” you can not harvest organs and all the people who make money off of this industry would have to find a different way to make a living. As such there is an inherent conflict of interest in those who promote organ donation and “brain death”.
#1 mayermayer, You are so so right.
Those promoters of organ donation from breathing so-called “cadavers” went and made an experiment using a sheep having a beating heart even when its head is cut off, by joining the arteries and veins that were cut upon decapitation, so thereby they justify cutting a heart or lungs or both from a ventilated breathing human being with the head still attached- sounds and is technically a live person, just because they failed to “opt -out” of the organ donation scheme. or even as crazily they opted in deliberately, stupidly, causing their own unnatural death at the hands of human beings in white coats.
This was never explained to the rabbis in regular appropriate language.
The fact remains that some people recover well from what is termed “brain damage”. So the whole process of “death by organ donation” is very un-Jewish, whichever way you look at it.
Please, Hods give up your game.
More to the point is that if ‘almost all of the rabbis of France recently voiced their sweeping opposition to organ donation’ then it is a chutzpah for an organisation from out of the country to present a forum that runs counter to this, thus undermining the authority of the local rabbinate.
Reply to #1 (“mayermayer”):
I hope you’re ready to explain to all the poskim who support this why they’re wrong.
If the Rabbis in France voiced opposing opinions then maybe this should not be such an issue. Cryopreservation is theoretical mostly but there should be halachic discussion about that…
Reply to #4 As I said, it is a big Chiddush to say that someone whose heart is beating and whose lungs are breathing is really considered dead because of “brain death” and you are therefore allowed to cut out their organs such as their heart and lungs. I understand that there are Poskim who say that this is acceptable. However there are Poskim who say this is murder. I am just trying to point out that most people are ignorant of exactly what passes for death and “brain death”, and how organs are actually harvested. Also many people are ignorant of the history of how and why this new definition of death came about. I also think that if intuitively someone appears to be alive, then perhaps it is best to follow intuition and perhaps that should also be factored into the Halachic debate. The fact that this issue has been turned into a legalistic, impersonal,analytical,exercise,contributes to distancing our minds from looking at the facts as they are. Yes the person is on a ventilator. But they are breathing with that ventilator, their heart is beating, their circulation is working,all of the organs are working, with the exception of certain parts of the brain. So basically we reduce a human being to the status of a machine. Remove this part of the machine and it is now broken and dead. My gut,intuition, and common sense, tells me that these people are still alive. The fact that an entire multi billion dollar industry was created based on redefining death,is highly disturbing. The fact that sick people have their lives saved as a result of heart and lung transplants does not justify this practice in my opinion. Adding the word “Halachic” to the phrase “organ donor society” is a form of manipulative propaganda designed to give the imprimatur of acceptability to something which is not far removed from cannibalism, in my opinion.