Case Pits Modern Medicine Against Traditional Jewish Law
Against Medical Advice, Orthodox Jewish Family Wants Son to Stay on Life Support
Smith says that the staff, including physicians, bedside nurses and social workers, "are distraught at what is providing futile care to the earthly remains of a former life."
After the case received national media attention last week, the hospital says it was inundated with harassing and threatening calls.
In response, it broke from its normal protocol and released a statement saying that while it "respects the autonomy of every family to make medical decisions that are consistent with accepted medical practice" it must adhere to District of Columbia law.
"Brain death is the medical and legal standard for death in the District of Columbia," lawyers for the hospital argued.
But Edward Reichman, a rabbi and doctor at Albert Einstein College in New York, says Jewish law is not so cut and dry.
"The family's belief is not a fringe extreme position in Jewish law. There are clearly many within the Jewish Orthodox community that accept brain death as legal death, but even those respect 100 percent, the views of others in the community who do not respect brain death as legal death."
Reichman says that the issue has come up before but that in the majority of cases no conflict emerged between the hospital and the family because cardiac death usually ensues within a few days or hours of this kind of brain death.
Zuckerman says the family has tried to find a facility in New York to take the child, but has not yet found an acceptable facility. The boy's parents, Eluzer and Miriam Brody, have declined to provide updates on the physical state of their son. The parents are members of the Bobov Hasidic sect, which has a large contingent living in Brooklyn.
Similar circumstances stemming from disputes regarding end-of-life issues have gained national attention with the cases of Terri Schiavo and Karen Ann Quinlan, but this case is different as doctors say that the boy has no brain function at all, unlike Schiavo and Quinlan, who were said to be in a "persistent vegetative state."
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