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WASHINGTON, DC [AP] — A 12-year-old New York boy with brain cancer has died after his family battled a hospital to keep him on a ventilator.

The lawyer for the Orthodox Jewish family says Motl Brody's bodily functions ceased Saturday. A machine had continued to work his lungs after he was pronounced dead Nov. 4 at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Boy Whose Religious Parents Battled Hospital Dies

Illustration Photo

WASHINGTON, DC [AP] — A 12-year-old New York boy with brain cancer has died after his family battled a hospital to keep him on a ventilator.

The lawyer for the Orthodox Jewish family says Motl Brody’s bodily functions ceased Saturday. A machine had continued to work his lungs after he was pronounced dead Nov. 4 at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The boy had already been declared brain dead, but some adherents of Jewish religious law say death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning.

The family had asked a judge to prevent further tests for brain activity. The hospital argued that its “scarce resources” were being used “for the preservation of a deceased body.”

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5 Comments

  • EDUCATE YOURSELVES, Yidden!

    B“H

    So many are worried about the ”right to Life“ (rightfully so!) in trying to prevent abortion (R”L“).

    While, of course, this is a very important cause, we often forget about the dangers of the secular ”right to Die“ (again, R”L“) movement, which seeks to make it standard procedure for people’s relatives and/or doctors to rule against patients like this one, and remove them from life support. Some even want the ”right“ to deny their ”loved“ ones to even GO onto life support! What has this society come to??!!

    As the recent JLI Talmudic Ethics course pointed out, while such a ”right to Die“ may SEEM ”reasonable“ (by secular standards, not by Torah standards!), if it becomes common practice (as it seems to be becoming), the ”right“ to die becomes an OBLIGATION to die, as exercising the ”right to die“ becomes standard medical practice.

    We see, in this case, a perfect example of the medical establishment turning Motl (A”H) into a “burden,” characterizing his family as “rebelling” against the unspoken standard practice in hospitals today.

    Yidden, wake up, and make sure YOUR state has the laws like we have in NY State, that can protect YOUR relatives. Even then, a patient’s frum family must often assert itself, to maintain treatment by Torah standards; It is against Torah to deny anyone food or air; to do so is a form of killing someone!

    As someone with frei relatives, who spoke out in horror (and was then ostracized) when they stopped putting food into the feeding tube of a relative who was actually slowly improving in health — but whose prognosis was for a very compromised rest of their life — I cannot stress enough how important it is that those with very ill or aged relatives LEARN what Torah says, in detail, in cases like this.

    If you had asked me, in advance of this relative’s illness, what the secular law says, I would have thought it was ILLEGAL to stop putting food into an already-in-place feeding tube of a patient who is in a nursing home (not even in a hospital — so the patient was medically stable, not in medical crisis!). And this patient even had long-term care insurance, so it was not even a money issue!

    BE PREPARED to have to buck the medical establishment, R“L! Strengthen yourself in advance, or you will face what Motl’s (A”H) family did, heaven forfend, or G-d forbid, you will face what I experienced.

    Baruch dayan haemes. Perhaps Motl’s passing can at least lead to improvements in the medical establishment’s respect for Torah standards, IF we as Yidden assert our sacred Torah.

  • A reader from Carroll Street

    B”H. I’m so amazed by the callousness shown by the medical staff at this hospital and also at the hospital in Canada with that other right to life case. I suppose it might come from not viewing patients as people; they become desnsitized to the sanctity of human life. It’s quite chilling and disturbing.

  • permission vs. obligation...

    quoting EDUCATE YOURSELVES. YIDDEN :
    As the recent JLI Talmudic Ethics course pointed out, while such a ”right to Die“ may SEEM ”reasonable“ (by secular standards, not by Torah standards!), if it becomes common practice (as it seems to be becoming), the ”right“ to die becomes an OBLIGATION to die, as exercising the ”right to die“ becomes standard medical practice.

    You are so right. This is one of the scary things about american law – that when something becomes ‘allowed’, is is not simply ‘allowed’, it is a ‘must’! The prospect of legal gay marriage accross the board poses a similar threat – how will orthodox rabbis say no to performing such a marriage without getting sued to the ends of the earth?????
    So much for free choice…