Aussie research may clear organ donation halachah
A MELBOURNE campaigner is hoping more Jewish Australians will register as organ donors now that new research may have found a way of circumventing halachic restrictions.
PETER KOHN
A MELBOURNE campaigner is hoping more Jewish Australians will register as organ donors now that new research may have found a way of circumventing halachic restrictions.
Dr Ronnie Goldberg, a dentist, and enthusiastic advocate for organ donation, is thrilled about the latest milestone in world-beating Australian medical research.
It enables vital body organs to be harvested for transplants as late as several hours after life-support systems have been switched off and cardiac death, the final stage of mortality, has occurred.
The new procedure — which so far applies to lungs and kidneys but may eventually be relevant for other body parts — does not require intervention at the earlier “brain dead” stage, said Dr Goldberg.
It skirts the prickly halachic issue of whether brain death constitutes actual death. The “brain death” definition is broadly accepted in the mainstream Orthodox Jewish community, but is still queried in ultra-Orthodox circles, which claim that as long as the heart is pumping, life remains.
Dr Goldberg, who chairs the Have A Heart Project through the Rotary Club of Williamstown, said he became an avid supporter of organ donation some years ago after learning that in 2003, 140 Australians died waiting for a lifesaving organ.
“That figure included 20 children,” he said.
The Rotarian added that Australia has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the developed world.
The Donations after Cardiac Death (DCD) research is spearheaded by Professor Greg Snell, the medical head of the lung transplant service at Melbourne’s The Alfred hospital.
In 2009, Prof Snell reported 24 DCD donor kidney transplants performed in Victoria.
Reporting to Rotary of Williamstown, which has so far raised more than $250,000 for the research, Prof Snell said the unit hopes to take the research to an upcoming conference of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation in Chicago.
Dr Goldberg hopes the Australian organ removal method will eventually be adopted in Israel.
Talks are underway with Israeli medical ethicist Rabbi Dr Avraham Steinberg of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, a halachic authority on transplants.
Orthodox rabbinical opinion in Australia rejects any unwarranted interference with a corpse before burial, but pikuach nefesh, the act of saving a life, takes priority.
The debate emerges over what constitutes death, but the ability to harvest organs well after cardiac death may allay these halachic concerns.
Rabbi Fred Morgan, senior rabbi of Temple Beth Israel, said that for the purpose of harvesting organs, Progressive rabbis generally agree death takes place at the brain death phase.
Enquiries: www.rotarywilliamstown.org.au
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