Religions Adapt to Endorse the Saving Grace of Organ Donors

It’s “a type of immortality” or “one of the great acts of godliness”--an extraordinary posthumous gift to the living that is so meaningful that virtually all of organized religion endorses the idea, according to the rabbi.

Rabbi Steven Jacobs was discussing efforts to overcome people’s natural squeamishness over the notion of donating organs after death for surgical transplants into ailing patients who need body parts such as a new liver, kidney, heart or even skin tissue.

Jacobs hosted a forum at Temple Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills Thursday night attended by about 75 people. The featured speaker was Rabbi Richard Address of Philadelphia, one of several religious activists taking the problem of organ shortages directly to audiences with spiritual sensibilities.

Liberal Reform Judaism follows Jewish law only selectively and infrequently cites the opinions of Orthodox rabbis. But the literature brought by Address to the meeting and Jacobs’ publicity release both cite prominently the endorsement of organ donations and transplants by rabbi-bioethicist Moshe Tendler of Yeshiva University in New York City.

“Nine people die every day waiting for an organ transplant in America,” said Tendler, who was quoted by Jacobs. “Human life is human life, Jew or non-Jew, [Hasidic] or secularist; saving any human life is mandated [by Jewish law],” wrote Tendler. To ignore such a need violates Jewish religious law, he said.

“My father is in full support of donating organs,” agreed Rabbi Aron Tendler of Shaarey Zedek Congregation in North Hollywood.

One Orthodox caveat to that position is that the donation “must always be done in consultation with a rabbi,” Aron Tendler said. The North Hollywood rabbi also said the donor must be declared dead by Jewish legal standards and that organs should be removed only “when the need for them is immediate.”

Orthodox Jewish support for organ donations initially appears to contrast sharply with traditional Judaism’s strong reservations about autopsies and the traditional Jewish emphasis on burying all parts of the dead.

However, Aron Tendler noted that many autopsies are performed on Orthodox Jews--when required by criminal courts or when Orthodox rabbis see “clear evidence that it would be key to saving other lives through research or shed light on a family’s genetic defects.”

Christian denominations and other religions generally favor organ donations or leave the issue to individual believers, according to a study guide published last year by Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations committee on bioethics.

Southern Baptists passed a resolution in 1988 to “encourage volunteerism regarding organ donation in the spirit of stewardship, compassion for the needs of others and alleviating suffering.”

Muslim scholars, like Jewish authorities, also value saving lives over normal strictures against cutting into a living donor or a cadaver to obtain an organ.

“Since injury to the body of a donor is less evil than leaving a patient to die, the procedure of organ donation and transplantation is sanctioned,” wrote physician-teacher Hassan Hathout of Los Angeles in his 1995 book “Reading the Muslim Mind.”

Despite the virtual lack of religious opposition, thousands of patients are on waiting lists for various organs, notably livers.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced Feb. 26 its intent to issue rules requiring that organ networks put patients with the greatest medical need “at the head of the list . . . no matter where in the country they may be hospitalized.” The present system gives priority to patients who live closest to the donor.

The decision, announced in a letter to Congress by HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, culminated a political fight lasting more than three years between the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the transplant system, and the relatively few large hospitals that care for the sickest patients and have the largest numbers on waiting lists.

The dilemma particularly focused on how best to distribute 4,000 livers each year among 7,000 waiting patients. However, the forthcoming HHS rules will affect all organs.

Despite the older rules favoring patients living closest to donor centers, retired child development teacher Doris McClain of North Hills said in an interview that she received a liver from North Carolina five years ago this month. “I think the reason I went to the top of the list was because I have a relatively rare blood type, B positive,” she said.

“I was given a wonderful new life,” said McClain. She and husband Ken, a retired social worker in the health field, make speaking appearances on behalf of organ donation through the Chatsworth-based San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council.

“It is a very difficult subject for people because it deals with their own mortality,” she said. Also, she added, people who stick a little dot on their driver’s license, which signifies their willingness to donate organs, should let their families know about it.

“In a time of grief, that can be overlooked or cause distress in the family,” she said.

Encino resident Irv Goldberg, a member of Rabbi Jacobs’ Temple Kol Tikvah, said that his son Michael L. Goldberg, 37, is continuing his academic career in American studies at the University of Washington because he received a donated kidney and pancreas in 1996. The younger Goldberg, a diabetic, was on dialysis for a year while waiting for new organs.

“The greatest blessing of all is to give of ourselves,” said Irv Goldberg. “That’s why I hope the clergy will be able to help people get past their emotional reactions.”

For information: Regional Organ Procurement Agency of Southern California (800) 933-0440. Temple Kol Tikvah (818) 348-0670. San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council (818) 718-6460.