Medical Halakhah

30Oct 2026 by David Shabtai No Comments

Is Infertility a Medical Condition? Halakhic Perspectives

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PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVES ON THE PARSHAH: VA-YERA After Avimelech takes Sarah into his household, Hashem strikes the house of Gerar: כי עצר עצר ה' בעד כל רחם לבית אבימלך (20:18). Once Sarah is returned, Avraham davens on Avimelech's behalf, and the Torah describes the result with a striking choice of words: וירפא אלקים את אבימלך ואת אשתו ואמהתיו וילדו—"God healed Avimelech, his wife, and his maidservants, and they bore children" (20:17). The Gemara (Bava Kamma 92a) famously learns from the juxtaposition of these pesukim with the very next one—וה' פקד את שרה—that whoever prays on behalf of another while needing the same thing himself is answered first. Avraham prayed for the fertility of Avimelech's household, and Sarah conceived.1 Implicit in the Gemara's reading is that Avimelech's household and Sarah suffered…

03Aug 2018 by David Shabtai

Who is responsible?

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While perhaps underappreciated, vaccines are perhaps the greatest advance in modern medicine. Diseases that killed thousands and devastated millions of lives are simply prevented. It's not perfect - no science is - but from a historical perspective, the change is beyond dramatic. And it seems that we have become victims of our own success. It's hard to imagine that during the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1917 that anybody would argue against vaccinations. It's just as hard to imagine parents of a child with polio refusing to vaccinate their other children when it became available on principled grounds. The argument that "it's not necessary to vaccinate since these diseases don't really exist anymore" is actually quite common. The fallacy is that most people don't know anybody with these diseases is precisely…

18Jul 2018 by David Shabtai

Bioethics Roundup – July 18

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Why Spain has more organ donors than any other country in the world In the US, the default assumption is that a person does not consent to organ donation upon their death unless they specifically "opt-in." Spain has implemented an "opt-out" policy, arguing that many people would in theory be willing to donate, but for some reason or another, don't get around to opting-in. This gets around this problem. Given the US hyper focus on individual liberty, it doesn't seem that it would fly on these shores. Personhood and the Three Branches of Government "In the majority opinion of Roe vs. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that if the notion of fetal personhood were established, the arguments for women's choice would collapse, "for the fetus' right to life would then…

03Jul 2018 by David Shabtai

Brain Death and the Controversial Case of Jahi McMath

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Last Thursday, Jahi McMath's family publicized that Jahi has died (been issued a death certificate in New Jersey). Jahi has been at the heart of the brain death debate in this country for the last 4 years, having been issued a death certificate in California in 2013 and now a death certificate in New Jersey in 2018. Her case has been the focus of much of bioethics for the past few years and likely will continue to occupy a great deal of thought for the foreseeable future. First part of the recent Harvard Medical School Conference on Brain Death:

27Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

Bioethics Roundup

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Nurse admits she overmedicated hospice patients to death – but no murder charges filed When hospice compensation decreases with each day that a patient stays in hospice, are we perhaps forgetting what hospice is really meant to do for patients? How to Provide Better Incentives to Organ Donors: Three experts discuss strategies to address the shortage of organs available for people who need transplants With a general distaste and opposition to monetary compensation for live organ donation (despite prospective studies showing its potential overall benefit), a search for creative solutions to save lives. My favorite incentive is for governmental provided lifetime health insurance matching that of the US representative in the donor's district. More on the benefits of that approach another time. Texas can't let misguided vaccination fears endanger all…

22Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

Is your identity really safe?

Genetics

Most of us are pretty hesitant to give out our social security numbers. While we have a vague idea what somebody might do with it, it's something deeply personal, connected to our financial wellbeing. We are worried about our credit and credit history and are even willing to pay companies to monitor our credit histories for anything questionable to deviating from the norm. When it comes to something far more personal, we don't seem to be as worried. Our DNA might contain the most personal information about ourselves that could exist and yet, we seem a lot less hesitant to hand over this information to people and companies we don't even know that well. The recent proliferation of genetic ancestry services is a case in point. Many of us are…

20Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

Are You Genetically Predisposed to Root for a Particular Team?

Genetics

Of course not. But with World Cup hysteria taking over much of the world (even causing a minor earthquake in Mexico), with no US team to root for, many Americans aren't interested. To try to generate some excitement and impetus for people to root for a particular country, 23andMe, the innovative DNA and ancestry research firm, is trying a new marketing trick - why not pick a team based on your genetic roots? If you can't pick who to root for, why not pick a team with whom you might share some genetic affinity? Apparently, some think that this isn't so simple. Art Caplan, director of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, argues that this is a form of racism, since There is no correlation between genetics and who…

24Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

The Hard Line Between Life and Death Becomes Soft, Recent Cases Show

brain death

David Shabtai Daily Caller - June 15, 2018 Answering the simple question of whether a person is alive or dead is becoming more complex. A flurry of recent cases tested how accurately we answer this basic question. Each case involves brain-dead patients. They are unconscious, unable to move or even breathe on their own; the cerebral damage is so severe that their injuries are all irreversible. But because it’s often only their brains that are damaged, with adequate ventilation, nutritional and other medical support, their hearts and other basic vegetative functions can continue. Continue reading at The Daily Caller

24Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

Dismissing Life as a Value – The Sad Story of Alfie Evans

Decision Making, End of Life Care

From the calm funeral earlier this week, you wouldn’t know that Alfie Evan’s last few days of life were surrounded by loud protests and emotional turmoil all over social media. A 23 month old toddler, Alfie Evans died two short weeks ago when his life support was withdrawn per court order, over and above his parents’ passionate and emotional pleas to keep them. Alfie suffered from a neurodegenerative disease and since December 2016, was hospitalized at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, connected to a ventilator and receiving nutritional support. The medical consensus was that he would never make any meaningful recovery as CAT scans revealed that most of the white matter of his brain had been destroyed. Since Alfie would never make any meaningful recovery, the hospital recommended that all life sustaining…

24Jun 2018 by David Shabtai

Shouldn’t parents know best?

Decision Making, End of Life Care

Charlie Gard was a very sick boy born with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a rare disease with no known cure resulting in death in infancy. During his hospitalization at the Greater Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), his parents found Dr. Hirano of Columbia University who was willing to offer an experimental therapy that had a slight chance of possibly extending Charlie’s life. They needed GOSH to approve the patient transfer but GOSH refused. Their physicians argued that Charlie was so sick and the therapy was so unlikely to work that it was wrong to even attempt. The UK High Court of Justice confirmed GOSH’s position and Charlie died under hospice care on July 28. Here is why you need to care. Continue reading at Times of Israel