Organ Donation

Answer

Jewish law distinguishes between organ donation during your lifetime and organ donation after death. While you are alive, to donate an organ that you can live without in order to save another life is one of the greatest acts you could do. However, consenting to have your organs removed after death presents some heavy problems.

The body doesn't belong to us, it belongs to G-d. He put it in our hands for safekeeping as long as we are alive. We are to use our bodies for good purposes and treat them with respect. So we can donate an organ that we can live without, because then we are using our body for a holy purpose. But as soon as our soul leaves our body we have no "rights" to it whatsoever. We have to return it to its rightful owner. It is forbidden to "use" a dead body for anything at all.

The only exception would indeed be directly to save a specific life, because saving life overrides almost every other Jewish law. BUT when you sign a consent form to have your organs removed, they will remove them whether or not they are needed for an immediate transplant. They may use them for research, or they may store them away, or even throw them out. Unless there is an actual person who immediately needs the organ, it is forbidden to tamper with a corpse.

But there is a much more serious problem. To be usable in a transplant, the organs have to be removed while the heart is still beating. But the Jewish legal definition of death is the heart stopping. So according to Jewish law the medics are actually killing the patient if they remove limbs after brain death but before absolute death.

This can lead to even more shakey ground. Imagine a case where a patient is "obviously" going to die according to the doctors, and they urgently need his organs for someone else. They may reason that they may as well take them now rather than wait for the event to happen and risk losing both patients. So we are dealing with issues bordering on murder.

There are some countries where there is an option to write on the consent form that you only agree to organs being removed if a rabbi is consulted beforehand, who will ascertain that they will only be removed after absolute death and be used only to save lives. In Australia there is no such option as yet. So presently we don't consent to the removal of organs after death.

When dealing with questions so fundamental and far-reaching as life and death, the responsibility is huge. Sentiment and feelings can be dangerous judges. I wouldn't want to have to decide what is right and wrong based on my own subjective opinion. Thank G-d we have the Torah to guide us in these ultimate issues.

With blessing,