A Classical-Liberal Response to the Crisis of Bioethics

M otl Brody, a twelve year old Hasidic Jew, died recently in Washington. During his last days, his life and death were the subject of intense media scrutiny, judicial proceedings, and bioethical commentary. His transition from life to death was marked not by the private mourning of friends and family, but by cost-benefit calculations and legal wrangling. The legal, economic, and bioethical considerations are symptoms of a larger conflict between how religious communities and medical science handle the difficult business of death. More than an end-of-life decision, however, Motl’s death reflects a crisis in modern bioethics, a field that has lost its focus and has forgotten ancient lessons about human power and limitations. There is no agreed-on time of death for Motl. His brain died on November 4, 2008, according to doctors, but his heart and lungs continued to pump with the help of a ventilator and numerous drugs until November 16. Because his brain had died, the medical community declared him dead. Because his heart and lungs continued to function, the Orthodox Jewish community believed him to be alive. This conflict over definitions of life and death resulted in legal and ethical struggles that occupied his family and doctors for the last two weeks of his life. Doctors at the hospital asked to be allowed to take him off life support because he had absolutely no chance of recovery, and by some accounts his brain was actually decomposing. His parents, however, wanted the doctors to wait until his bodily systems as a whole shut down.