WASHINGTON: The Orthodox Jewish parents of a boy whom doctors have ruled “brain-dead” are fighting in court to keep him on life support, arguing that their religion considers him still alive. The hospital wants to discontinue care for the boy.
Doctors at the Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington want to end treatment for Motl Brody, 12, whom they declared deceased on Wednesday after brain cancer left him with no brain activity, the hospital’s lawyer Kenneth Rosenau said.
But Brody’s conservative Jewish parents, saying their religion does not define death in that way, are fighting to keep Motl on life-sustaining equipment in the hospital’s intensive care unit, their lawyer Jeffrey Zuckerman said.
“The legal issue is this: the parents are deeply religious people and in their religious belief a person is dead when their heart and lungs stop,” Zuckerman said. “And if a person is not dead, there is a religious obligation to give that person medical treatment. Their son is alive as long as his heart is beating, his lungs are breathing,” he said.
The Brodys, from Brooklyn, New York, live by the Jewish Halakha principles, which define death as “irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions,” according to the family’s court filings in the case.
