HUP doctors discuss Jewish medical ethics

A 35 year-old Jewish woman is in a completely unresponsive state. She is being kept alive by a ventilator in the aftermath of a car accident. She is pregnant. While terminating the pregnancy might increase her chances of survival, some doctors say she should be sustained long enough for the fetus to be delivered by a Cesarean section. The question of what health care professionals should do in this and similar cases was debated yesterday at a panel discussion, part of a program entitled Jewish Perspectives On Health Care Ethics. The panel consisted of John Hansen-Flaschen, co-chair of the ethics committee at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Daniel Eisenberg, a radiology resident at HUP and Rabbi Gail Milgram, lecturer on bioethics at Princeton University. The group examined four hypothetical situations involving various moral issues often faced by medical professionals today. "The cases reflect the dilemmas that we all face in the beginning, middle, and ends of our lives," said Social Worker Judith Watman, who moderated the panel discussion. Topics included euthanasia and patient confidentiality. One theme throughout the discussion was the idea that there are no clear-cut answers to these issues. Rabbi Milgram said the personal value systems of patients need to be understood and made a priority. "There are people whose level of observance will cause them to go to someone called a posek," said Rabbi Milgram, "which is normally a Rabbi who has become so studied in Jewish law that people come to them and ask them for an opinion which would be considered binding about the situation." Eisenberg, also heavily schooled in Jewish tradition, expressed strong feelings about medical decision-making. "I'd like to postulate that doctors have no better idea of what there is to be found than anyone else," he said. Hansen-Flaschen added, "I agree that doctors aren't smarter or wiser than anybody else." "Our job is to frame the question as technically as we can," he continued. "When I am up against a horrible choice, I go back and re-analyze the data." And Eisenberg voiced his displeasure about elective abortions and euthanasia. According to Judaism, he said, the body is a gift from God and people do not have a right to deliberately injure it. "Desires of a person are secondary when it is a matter of life and death," said Eisenberg. College freshman Davida Rapoport, one of the program's organizers, said the medical profession should examine bioethical issues from a Jewish point of view. "For Jewish people, no matter how religious you are, it's something that people always have questions about," said Rapoport. "I think that medical ethics is a quickly growing field," said second-year Medical student Daniel Libenson. "With all sorts of new technologies in medicine, ethics becomes a lot more important."