Israel’s Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Isser Untermann yesterday laid down the conditions under which heart transplants and similar surgery can be performed in accordance with Halachah, Jewish oral law. Speaking at the opening session of the 11th congress on oral law here, he said transplants could be performed only to save a living recipient who is at hand and that organs cannot be kept in storage until a recipient turns up. On the determination of time of death, a subject that has been widely discussed in medical circles all over the world, the Chief Rabbi said it was the Halachic position that “one is dead when one has stopped breathing.”
The medical profession in Israel, as elsewhere, is divided over the question of when a patient should be declared medically dead. The transplant of organs has been approved by the Orthodox rabbinate on the principle of “pikuakh nefesh” which permits even the desecration of the Sabbath in case of danger to life. So far, however, there have been no transplant operations in Israel involving vital organs although there have been corneal transplants.
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