Washington Post defining death

Twelve year old Molt Brody gained national attention this week as his parents, Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, prepared to battle Northwest Washington hospital to keep their son on life support in D.C. Supreme Courts. The fight ended Saturday when Brody's heart stopped beating, said an attorney for the boy's family and was buried near Brooklyn on Sunday.

" Early Saturday, Motl's 'heart stopped beating,' Zuckerman, the family's attorney, said as rode a train to Washington from the funeral. 'In the end, nature took its course before the judicial system ran its course.'"

Brody who was admitted to the hospital with brain cancer on June 1st, was declared legally dead on Nov. 4 after brain activity had stopped. But his parents rejected the doctor's pronouncements saying, their faith does not define death in that way.

The family pleaded with the hospital to keep Brody on life support but doctors insisted in court papers that treating him would be "offensive to good medical ethics". After the story hit mainstream  presses, the battle brought in pleas from sympathetic neighbors around the community who sent in nearly 200 e-mails and phone calls to the hospital, asking to not give up on Brody.

Washington Post staff writers who followed the emotional battle between the Brody family and the hospital drew comparisons to similar cases that drew up debates over what scientifically defines when the body is pronounced dead. Cases such as the Terri Schiavo case, a woman who died in 2005 after being in comatose for 15 years.

In this particular case, Washington Post writers needed to attempt to define death in scientific terms and what it meant for Orthodox religious figureheads in this complicated and emotional story.

I was impressed by the way the writers outlined the medical process in a way that made it easy for readers, such as myself, who get confused by medical jargon. Even a complicated process such as a respiratory test conducted on Brody, were explained in plain and simple language.

“Those activities [breathing and maintenance of blood pressure and blood volume] are controlled by the brain stem, which connects the spinal cord to the brain. Doctors performed various tests on Motl to see whether that structure is working. The tests included briefly removing the boy from the ventilator. Normally, the brain stem stimulates breathing, even if the efforts are inadequate, as carbon dioxide builds up in the blood. But according to papers filed by the hospital in Superior Court, the child made no respiratory efforts even when his carbon dioxide was double the normal concentration.”

Consulting with religious figureheads of a particular faith on sensitive and ill-defined theoretical issues such as when does life begin, or in this case end, can often times be repetitive or futile. In this case, the reporters answered impending questions I, the reader, on what Orthodox Jews really do believe when it comes to death.

According to Edward Reichman, a rabbi and doctor at Albert Einstein College, according to Orthodox Jewish law, death is defined at the moment when the soul leaves the body.

“And that's where the debate begins, he said. Some Orthodox Jews base the definition on brain activity, while others base it on a heartbeat. As Reichman put it: "The child may not be conscious, may not be interactive, but that doesn't mean that in the eyes of Jewish law, the value of that life is any less."

Overall, tackling such an emotional and controversial subject such as the one of death and religion raised in this story, can be hard to balance. In my eyes, the contributors at the Washington Post did a fair and accurate job at covering the basis of the issue in good taste and with a sensitive eye.