18-24 Mar

Q: Has the number of major Torah adjudicators on medical ethics ethics questions grown as a result of the dramatic rise of secular interest in the subject?

ABSTRACT

Although the term Jewish Medical Ethics first came into use in the 1950s, and the popular interest is a recent phenomenon, their relevance and acceptance has been part of the fabric of the Jewish people since Sinai. Rabbinical rulings dealing with health and medicine, based on the commandments in the Pentateuch and their elaboration in the Talmud and codes of Jewish law, have come down to us over the centuries, and new ones are issued every year. The collection of such rabbinical rulings is know as halakha-the right path. Halakha is a dynamic and ongoing process covering all aspects of life. It is not derived by philosophic speculation about contrived situations. This is why most Jewish medical ethicists emphasize the doctor-patient relationship; most of the questions presented for adjudication belong to this category. They were posed by doctors or patients or their families.

In the future, it is expected that more questions will be submitted in non-medical areas that have a profound impact on health and medical treatment. Halakha will have to come to grips with a shrinking world and its sociological overtones: how Jewish doctors (and a Jewish state) deal with communities that have different values from ours about life and death, who practice idolatry, non-Western medicine, and what we might consider cruelty-the whole field of cross-cultural ethics.

Prior to the 1950s, discussions of medical ethics in America did not attract much public attention. The subject interested mainly a few academic philosophers engaged in their eternal quest of distinguishing right from wrong and a number of Catholic theologians worried about the role of Catholic hospitals and medical practitioners in a permissive society (i.e., which was rejecting the teaching of the church about abortion and contraception). In the practical world of the American Medical Association, the major ethical issues sixty years ago were largely limited to doctors who advertised their services, who prescribed drugs for self-use, and who testified against other doctors in court. Most of the other ethical problems were covered by the Hippocratic oath and the legal system….

It is quite remarkable, as the twentieth century merges into the twenty-first, considering everything else that happened in the last hundred years, that every doctor who seeks his or her answers in the Torah, will today recognize respective rulings of three men-none licensed to practice medicine-about what is permissible and what is forbidden in current medical practice: Rabbis Moshe Feinstein and Shlomo Zalman Auerbach of blessed memory and Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, may he live. You can add a few more names, but not many more: Unterman, Goren, Yosef, Eliahu, Elyashiv, Silberstein et alia. In our generation their rulings defined and continue to define Jewish medical ethics. Future generations of scholars concerned with practicing medicine according to the will of the A-lmighty will cite the responsa of the above mentioned authorities as part of the tradition that started with Moses. Just as did Rabbi Jakobovits with the ninety-six poskim he cited in his book. Ninety-six in six hundred years averages between six or seven per century. That's not too different from the one we just passed through….

History tells us that Jewish physicians have been practicing medicine according to halakha for more than two millennia, continually coping with the benefits and challenges of new medical knowledge and technology, and simultaneously contending with the influence of indigenous religions and prevailing philosophies.

BIO
Professor Emeritus Velvl Greene earned a PhD in bacteriology and biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, where he was professor of public health and microbiology for many years. In 1986 he and his family settled in Israel, where he directed the Sir Immanuel Jakobovits Center for Jewish Medical Ethics and also taught public health at the University of Ben-Gurion of the Negev in Beersheba.

Most of Professor Greene's career was devoted to teaching and researching environmental health and microbiology. One of the original bioscience researchers participating in the US Space Program, he has authored and coauthored dozens of scientific papers, educational films, monographs, and other scholarly contributions in such diverse areas as disinfection and sterilization, aerobiology, contamination control and hospital infection control.

Together with his wife and five children, he was active in the Minneapolis, Minnesota Jewish community and Habad Lubavitch. Since his retirement he has extensively lectured in North America on a broad variety of Jewish and scientific topics.

vgreene@netvision.net.il

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