The recent tragic incident in which a young woman died of an allergic reaction to dairy after accidentally being served dairy whip in a fleishig restaurant, led to a discussion regarding the culpability of the restaurant owner.

Very tragically, a 23 year old woman died last week because of a kashrut mistake.

The fear of potential spread of the Corona Virus has possibly become a greater talking point around Israel than the upcoming elections next week!

Chief Rabbi Dovid Lau has been asked many halachic questions related to Corona

According to Kikar, Rabbi Lau said that anyone instructed to be in isolation must remain in isolation as instructed and is prohibited from leaving isolation to go to shul to daven with a minyan. Even if it is only a slight suspicion of exposure that caused the isolation he is not allowed to leave to go to shul and he would be causing great damage to others by doing so.

Another psak by Rav Lau is that one cannot put himself in danger, so a person should not go to a place that might have been exposed.

Additionally, this morning on Radio Kol Barama, Rav Lau said that if the Ministry of Health determined a case requires quarantine or isolation - even someone who always goes to minyan or to a shiur must listen carefully to the doctors orders and follow them precisely.

Behadrei is reporting that a group of businessmen who deal directly with China have been adversely affected by the Corona virus and went to Rav Chaim Kanievsky to seek counsel. Some of them run businesses whose stock price has dropped because of Corona, others who travel to China for business and now cannot, others who import from China.. and they are concerned wondering if they should sell everything off now before their businesses are destroyed.

Rav Kanievsky's response was to follow instructions from the authorities regarding anything Corona related and being careful but they should not sell off their stocks and businesses and should not panic. Rav Kanievsky told them to increase tefilla, especially that they should not incur damages form the virus.

Interestingly, we see from both Rav Lau and Rav Kanievsky how they stressed the importance of following instructions from the authorities...

Walla News is reporting that the authorities, led by the Ministry of Health, is considering canceling the Tel Aviv Marathon scheduled for this Friday, due to fear of the Corona Virus and travelers entering Israel for the marathon.

The issue was raised in a discussion today among authorities among a list of possible measures to be taken to prevent the spread of Corona.

The Tel Aviv Marathon event draws about 40,000 participants among the variety of races, plus police, MDA and members of other organizations securing the event.

According to the report, the authorities will weigh the chance of people who might have been exposed to and possibly carrying the virus and the risk it presents to the event participants, versus the event itself.

Various health professionals are quoted as saying this needs to be taken seriously but the decision should be weighed carefully. And the concern is not being exaggerated.

It sounds exaggerated to me, though obviously if the risk is real canceling would be the right move. It seems more like the common CYA method of making decisions here. Sort of like back when a runner in the half marathon of Tel Aviv about 6 or 7 years ago died from heat stroke and then for the next couple of years they made all runners sign waivers and take stress tests, until they somehow realized they were being stupid. Hopefully the risk won't be significant, and they'll determine that the events can proceed as planned.

A group of tourists from South Korea have been foudn to be infected with the Corona Virus, and came into contact with a group of 30 Israeli students while touring in the Beer Sheva region.

The 30 Israeli students have been placed in isolation/quarantine, and are receiving guidance and instruction from the relevant officials.

TOI says that the group of Korean tourists also visited Netanya, Caesarea, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, Beersheba, Jerusalem and the West Bank, and possibly other places.

If you think you might have come into contact with them, contact your doctor or a health ministry official.

I must say, I am happy right now that Bet Shemesh is a relatively boring city and not a major tourist attraction...

The dreaded Corona Virus has countries around the world,  including Israel, wary and making preparations in the event that it should make its away across the border.

In China the death toll and the infected toll continue to rise at a rapid pace. If you don't trust the Chinese government to release true numbers, as I don't, it might have disaster potential, if it isn't already a disaster.

The Eida Hachareidis has called for a prayer rally against the globally spreading virus. They set the day for Erev Rosh Chodesh Adar and called upon people everywhere and anywhere they might live to daven on that day to remove all illness and to do teshuva.
source: Ladaat

I am impressed that the Eida has called for a prayer rally even though the virus has not yet hit Israel or other Jewish communities. Good for them.

this is major headlines in Israel because in the Haredi school system, and even more so in the hassidic system, secular education is shunned, yet entry into medical school requires a high level background of education and has very spots available to a large number of applicants...

This is a bit too brief for my liking, but Actualic bring an interesting psak about going to shul during this scare of the Corona Virus.

According to the report, some Jews from China sent a question to a special beis din in Bnei Braq established to deal with medical issues and halacha headed by Rav Shmuel Eliezer Stern. These Jews in China are concerned about the spread of this dangerous Corona Virus and want to know if they should continue to go to shul to daven with a minyan or if they should avoid it out of fear of getting infected with the virus?

The answer from the beis din was that we have to be more stringent regarding situations of danger than regarding situations of transgressing prohibitions. Ergo, if there is even a slight concern about the virus spreading and getting infected by going to shul,. one should not go to the shul.

I guess this means it is not a blanket hetter to stay home, but if in the location where any specific person is there is a valid concern of the virus, one should stay home. If where you are there has been no virus and there is no real concern, then go to shul.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky, and other rabbonim, have been asked similar questions and have answered similarly, adding that the professional authorities dealing with the issues should be listened to and instructions followed to avoid getting exposed to the virus.

Everyone should stay healthy!

Rav Shalom Cohen, head of the Council of Torah Sages of Shas, issued an interesting psak yesterday. Rav Cohen said that women should not get ultrasound tests while pregnant. He says there is no need to know the gender of the baby in advance and there is no need to see if the baby is complete or not. For what purpose?

Rav Cohen said that one should not do an ultrasound, and if one is planning the healing in advance, he should expect the problems. He said there is an expression that God prepares the solution in advance of the problem. The expression is God is מקדים רפואה למכה but that means that if you plan the refuah first, if you prepare the solution, you have to be concerned that you will be hit with the problem.
source: Kikar

In other words, as I understand it, you are at more risk of having problems by trying to prepare solutions in advance. So, going to get a ultrasound, that does not really help with anything anyway, is going to be the cause of problems with the pregnancy and baby, God forbid.

According to Haaretz, Rav Moshe Klein, the rav of Hadassah Hospital, has requested the staff of the Hadassah Hospital emergency room deal first with cases, on Fridays, of religious people, and only after that with the cases of non-religious people.

The idea would be to enable the religious people to get out of the hospital quicker and to be able to go home for Shabbos, when possible, rather than delays in treatment causing them to be stuck in the hospital for Shabbos.

According to Rav Klein, this is already the protocol in place and meant to be used in the emergency room, as per the directives of the director of the hospital. The Director, Professor Zev Rosenstein denies the existence of such a protocol..

According to Haaretz, sources at the hospital say that the rav recently made this request requested and said that Shabbos observance should be the main factor in triage, even higher than medical urgency of the cases present and higher than the consideration of who came in for treatment earlier or later and how long people have been waiting.

An emergency room's main priority should always be urgency of cases. Hadassah has a triage room right at the entrance to the emergency room and patients go through there first so the urgency can be evaluated. I have a hard time believing that Rav Klein requested anything be given higher priority than medical urgency - perhaps he made this request regarding cases that have equal levels of medical urgency, and then Shabbos-observance should be taken into account as well. I would have no problem with that - everyone wants to get out of the hospital faster. Nobody wants to be stuck for a few extra hours or a day. It also affects the mental state of the patient, as he is concerned about being unnecessarily stuck for too long (in cases where he or she will be treated and released). Taking Shabbos-observance into account, when medical urgency is equal, seems reasonable to me.

Regardless, it seems to be of only minor importance. Once word gets out that this is a factor, all sorts of people will say they need to be home before Shabbat, and I am not sure how a nurse or doctor will be able to decide who is really shomer shabbat and who is not, nor should it really be their job to try to make such evaluations. It would be a shame if they only go by stereotypical dress (someone obviously religious compared to someone else less obviously religious) and as a result some shomer shabbos people get priority and other somer shabbos people are pushed lower down the list because of a dress code they don't adhere to.

A senior doctor at Hillel Yaffe Hospital, Dr Yaron Rieber, head of the Neurology department, said that Netanyahu must be removed and taken down. Rieber also said that if Netanyahu would come in for treatment he would refuse to treat him.

Rieber, like anybody else, is entitled to his political opinions and he is perfectly within his rights to want Netanyahu replaced and removed from the PMO. Saying you would refuse to treat him should he come in for medical care is another story.

We have seen the medical industry in Israel go the extra mile to treat terrorists and leaders of foreign countries and armies that are hostile to Israel, and get tremendous praise for considering medical care for everyone the most humane and altruistic.I don't know what Dr Rieber thinks about treating terrorists but the Israeli medical industry should roundly condemn Rieber for his statement about potentially refusing treatment to the PM, and the hospital he works for should look into sanctioning him if any rules have actually been broken (refusing treatment is a problem, saying you would refuse treatment is not necessarily the same thing).

MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beyteynu) has proposed a law that would allow people to fill their prescriptions in any pharmacy to his or her choosing. The proposed law would do away with limitations placed by the various Kupot Cholim forcing patients to fill many prescriptions using the "in house" pharmacy and would allow the prescriptions to be filled at external pharmacies, including private pharmacies and those managed by other Kupot Cholim.

The purpose of this proposal is two-fold:
1. to allow the patient more choice and flexibility in filling the prescriptions.
2. to protect the private pharmacies who are hurt by the limitations of exclusivity placed by the Kupot Cholim

With the Kupot Cholim doctors often giving digital prescriptions, accessible only by "internal" pharmacies within the network, this law would also force the Kupot to also give regular old-fashioned prescriptions that can be taken to external pharmacies.

If this law passes it will cost the Kupot a lot of money. They will need to reimburse the external pharmacies the monies above the government coverage and the patient copay at higher rates than they normally pay for the medicine at the discounted rates they receive for the internal pharmacies. They also might lose their discounted rates as they will not be buying the same large amounts of medicines as patients will be going to other pharmacies.

They will also lose out on the upsells - patients forced to go to Kupa pharmacies also buy other items that are sold at the same time, instead of going to a second store to get them. If the patients can go to other pharmacies for the medicines, they will have no reason to go to the kupa pharmacy and not only will the kupot lose out on the medicines, they will also lose out on the various upsells.

They oppose this proposal because they say it will cause them a catastrophe from a financial perspective.
source: Behadrei

It remains to be seen if this will pass, bu the kupot seem to have some serious claims. I think most of the issues can be worked out. Increased competition is always better for the consumer. The consumer would be able to choose where to buy his or her medicines based on convenience and price and whatever other factor the patient takes into account. The kupot will have to carry more medications to have available for a broader base of customers, as their own pharmacies will no longer be accessible to only their own patients but also to patients of other kupot. This could be a win win, if they can make adjustments to the proposal to satisfy the kupot a bit more.

Good news out of Israel today. Thus morning the Health Ministry announced that they have approved official recognition of Physician Assistant as a profession. They are finishing training the first group of 33 PAs who will operate working alongside doctors, performing the initial examinations of patients before the doctor sees them and will deal with recommending further care. The goal is to shorten the waiting time and relieve the bottlenecks in hospitals.
source: Ynet

This is big news. Many immigrants, and potential immigrants, have been hampered by the lack of recognition of their certifications as PAs and left them potentially without jobs when moving to Israel. That in addition to the benefits to the medical field itself if it can be successful in shortening waiting times.

Israel has yet to make peace with the PA, but they are making peace with the PAs...

This is amazing.

According to a report in Ynet, doctors in Shaarei Tzedek Hospital successfully dissolved a large growth with Coca Cola.

The 71 year old patient had a 7cm (diameter) growth in his stomach and it was causing a blockage and a deterioration of the stomach's ability to function properly.. The patient had already lost a lot of weight and was suffering from other problems caused as a result of this. Doctors had already tried to break up the growth unsuccessfully. He would now have needed a serious surgery to remove the growth.

The doctor then decided to try dissolving the growth using Coca Cola. There is a precedent for this, as a Greek doctor did something similar in 2002, and there have been other reports of success since then.

2 days after the patient began drinking the cola, the growth began breaking up. On the third day it disappeared completely. It is actually 3 years later now, and the patient is still clean.

Doctors do not often recommend drinking Coca Cola. It contains a lot of sugar. and this procedure requires the drinking of a lot of cola. It actually made me think of the stories people say of using coca cola to remove rust from pipes. While Coke might not be healthy in general, I guess it does have some benefits!

This also takes me back to the history of Coca Cola that was created by Dr Pemberton and was effective in curing a number of various ailments.. Coca Cola is still living true to its original intentions!

According to INN, the Eida is upset about a new initiative in one of the Haredi girl seminaries of Jerusalem.

The initiative is to offer an extracurricular course in first aid and medical studies.

The Eida, in its newsletter, is upset that this will be a slippery slope and graduates of the course will end up going to emergency scenes, under the guise of saving lives, and from there they'll go on to more things of which there are no need to describe.

"Seminar HaChadash" has, reportedly, printed up a brochure promoting this new course so as to teach graduates to be able to deal with events that might happen in public places, such as in school and other such places.

you won't see this logo on the course described...

The Eida says that this course, offered in coordination with Ichud Hatzalah and aopproved by the Ministry of Education is even "dangerous" for men to participate in, but to find a way for women to enter the world of Hatzalah is bordering on destroying the entire concept of Kol Kvoda Bas Melech Pnima - the honor of a woman is inside. They suggest, consider if there is God forbid an event, and women who have graduated such a course with certification as a medic are in the area, they will run to assist out of a concern of pikuach nefesh... and the road is paved from there to doing sheirut leumi (National Service).

The Eida rejects the claim that the course is intentioned to give them the ability to be medical escorts on class trips and other activities, as "one must be naive to think that people who invested 3700nis to attain the certification as a medic will then make sure to only use it for class trips and situations that arise just a few times each year." Rather, they will eventually also join ZAKA and Hatzalah and other such services and we will see seminar-graduate women donning the emergency responder vests running around, while the Secular will be happy about another principle having been abandoned.

To contrast this, the Ezras Nashim group of female responders in NY has gone live, so maybe they have a point, if you consider that type of thing bad..

What do you think is the right policy?

Until now, medical teams responding to a terrorist attack would treat victims first and only after that treat the terrorist.

Due to an appeal by the Physicians for Human Rights, the Ethics Bureau has decided to make the Medical Association change its policy.

Now, according to the new policy, medical teams will have to treat the worst injured first, no matter who it is, including the terrorist.
source: Jewish Press

So, what do you think?

I understand that it is difficult to put the decision in the hands of a EMT, and different EMTs or paramedics or doctors might make different decisions as to who should be treated first, if the decision is up to them. The medical teams should only be concerned with medicine, and not trying to figure out who did what and were they right or wrong, justified or not.

On the other hand, the terrorist should not be given priority over his victim. No matter how badly injured he is. No victim should have to wait for treatment because the terrorist is taking up the resources of the medical team.

After the victims are treated - sure, then treat the terrorist. But not before.

I think I lean towards the old policy, that of treating the victims first, though I do see the difficulty in having a medical official make a decision to not treat someone for moral reasons.

What do you think?

Some big news recently was the High Court deciding in favor of the Meuhedet health clinic against a family whose baby was born paralyzed.

Meuhedet had refused to cover treatment of the baby, because they said a doctor had warned the parents early in the pregnancy that the baby would be born paralyzed, and recommended that they abort the pregnancy. The parents went to Rabbi Mordechai Eliiyahu who advised them to not abort. They followed the rabbis advice, the baby was born paralyzed as the doctor had said would happen, and Meuhedet refused to cover expenses.

Based on some reports (not in the INN article linked below) it seems the wife got pregnant while on an IUD, which is considered dangerous. It is risky for the pregnancy, and it is risky for the baby. The doctor recommended aborting, as the baby would, based on his exams, be born paralyzed, and the family chose to continue the pregnancy, based on advice form the rabbi. They sued claiming the doctor did not give them all the necessary information they need in order to make the decision.

The family sued, the family won. Meuhedet was obligated to pay. Meuhedet appealed to the High Court, and the High Court now ruled in favor of Meuhedet, overturning the original decision. The Court considers it unlikely that the doctor would not have explained to them the dangers and they need to be held responsible for rejecting the doctors advice.
source: INN

We don't know, from the articles, what the advice from Rabbi Eliyahu was based on. Was it a bracha? Was it advice? was it a psak halacha against abortion? Was it based on a kabbalistic vision? Was it psychological support for a troubled family in a difficult time? I'm not sure it matters, but we cannot comment on it because we don't know what it was.

I agree that Rabbis are not doctors. Rabbis can be approached for comfort and guidance, but they should not give medical advice, unless they have acquired expertise in any particular field (like they should not give financial advice unless they have expertise in those matters). This is not to say anything bad about Rabbi Eliyahu - we don't know what he said. Maybe he gave a bracha, maybe he gave a psak halacha, maybe he just offered comfort, or maybe he gave [bad] advice. We don't know, so we cannot comment on it.

On the other hand, I can say I am surprised that parents are obligated to follow a doctors advice to terminate a pregnancy. I never heard such a thing before. I do wonder if they went to another doctor for a second opinion. Regardless, I am surprised to hear that they were obligated to terminate a pregnancy like this. Advice to terminate can be understood, perhaps, especially if there was some sort of danger to the mother's life (which it does not say was the case), but to turn that to an obligation to terminate?

I fear where this might take us. Will parents now feel more pressure to terminate high risk pregnancies out of fear of how they might later be obligated based on the outcome?

Rabbis are not doctors, but doctors are supposed to work to save lives, not end them.

MK Ofer Shelach (Yesh Atid) submitted a law proposal that would legalize euthanasia (a.k.a. assisted suicide) for terminal patients.

The proposal passed a majority in the ministerial legislative committee, and will head to Knesset for voting.

The law will allow a doctor to prescribe a lethal does of anesthetics without being liable criminally for having given it to him.

Shelach defends his law proposal by saying that this will give the patient some sort of control over his own life even in his final days, in a way that also will relieve himself of his pain.

Obviously this bill has nothing to do with Judaism (Shelach himself said that passing it will bring Israel into the group of "enlightened" countries), and getting it passed will not be a simple thing.

While Woody Allen might not be making aliyah because of yesterdays law proposal, Dr. Death (Jack Kevorkian) might just be making initial contact right now with Nefesh bNefesh...

The Ministry of Health has been on a campaign to inoculate children born after January 1, 2004 for the polio virus with a weakened-virus oral inoculation.

They say it is very important to get the relevant children inoculated.

Visiting Bnei Braq today, Minister of Health Yael German mentioned that the percentages are low in the haredi community of inoculations, and she said people are less aware of the need and in a city with so many children and so many children who are not given vaccinations it is so important that they get this polio vaccination.

And here is what I wanted to point out - Rav Shteinman was asked what he thinks about the necessity of getting inoculated. According to Kikar, Rav Shteinman's responses was that people should get their kids inoculated, and the ability to heal was given to the doctors, so it is very important to heed the instructions of the doctors - if they say to inoculate, you should do so. While it is brought down that people with great faith do not need to get involved in medicine, that only applies to someone with a level of faith that is practically not present today among anybody, so we are all obligated by the passuk of "ורפא ירפא".