For those who engage in Daf Yomi, the daily study of a page of the Talmud, a major milestone was achieved last week when the tractate or volume of Bava Basra was completed, the longest of all the tractates, which required almost six months to learn. I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a siyum (celebration of the completion of Bava Basra) at Congregation Ramath Orah on the Upper West Side, a joyous occasion. Bava Basra covers many interesting topics of halacha, Jewish law, but one of its more interesting topics (at least for an oncologist) is the case of the shchiv me’ra, the person on his/her deathbed. Many laws apply to this individual, among them the circumstance where he/she allocates his/her possessions to others through an oral deathbed pronouncement. Depending on the precise circumstances, these declarations have the full force of law despite the rules of inheritance or a preexisting will.
But the Mishna raises the case in which, following this declaration, he/she miraculously recovers his/her health—either through divine intervention (remember Hezekiah who reverses his fatal illness by prayer in the Book of Kings?) or an error by the oncologist—who knows? Can the shchiv me’ra now recover his/her assets from the people to whom he/she so graciously gave them? Well, as with most things in the Talmud, it depends—sometimes yes and sometimes no. One hopes that they were understanding friends.
In 2005, a 60-year old man, John Brandrick, was told at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, located in Cornwall, about 250 miles from London in the U.K., that he had a progressive pancreatic cancer and that he only had some months to live. Everyone responds to such information in a different way. Mr. Brandrick quit his job, sold his car, got rid of all his clothes, and went on a year-long tour of England. He went to fancy hotels, ate expensive meals, and generally lived it up. Some older people may recall a television series from the 1960s, “Run for Your Life,” which had a weekly episode of a fictional character who had also been given a fatal diagnosis (we are never told its nature) and similarly gets in his car and roams the U.S., meeting and helping people weekly; he can never get the girl because of the terrible prognosis awaiting him but instead, at the end of each hour, he moves on to the next town.
For Mr. Brandrick, it turned out that the doctors had made an error (it happens!) and he really had pancreatitis. But he was now almost broke, and had to put his house up for sale. Understandably he sued the hospital and I gather that he won the lawsuit though I could not find the amount of the award. One wonders what the Talmud and halacha would have said about the return of his car, house and clothes under these circumstances.
Another case involved a 39-year-old mother of two in Texas who went to a hospital for stomach pains in 2022. The scans she underwent revealed kidney stones, but also a mass in her spleen. The mass was resected, but the pathology reading appears to have been difficult and it was sent ultimately to four pathologists. She was finally given a diagnosis of clear cell angiosarcoma, a rare but incurable malignancy. She was told she had a little more than a year to live.
She was referred to a specialized cancer hospital and underwent several cycles of very intensive chemotherapy, resulting in hair loss and severe nausea and vomiting. She said later that she wrote letters for her future grandchildren and goodbye letters to her children. At a later appointment, when the nurse practitioner reviewed her records, she noted that the diagnosis was incorrect and that the patient never had cancer to start with. Apparently, her oncologist, rather than being embarrassed about the error and apologizing, congratulated her on the reversal. The patient told the press that what bothered her most was that now, one year later, she is still being sent bills by the hospital for the fees that resulted from the hospital’s errors—none of the bills have been dismissed.
There are numerous such anecdotes online, and such errors will inevitably occur on occasion. I do not relate these tales as a recommendation to keep the phone number of a good malpractice attorney handy. Rather it is to highlight the wisdom of the Talmud in the recognition that the possibility of the shchiv me’ra rising from his/her deathbed is not far-fetched and can have a variety of reasons.
It would surely be more judicious to consider under less pressured circumstances how to deal with your estate rather than to wait until you are on death’s door. I suspect that in today’s litigious society an unhappy heir would find a pathway to discrediting the declaration of a shchiv me’ra anyway. Too much Dilaudid? Perhaps it is me, but I do not recall in Bava Basra any mention of the question of whether the shchiv me’ra was compos mentis. Or whether the doctor was.
Alfred I. Neugut, MD, PhD, is a medical oncologist and cancer epidemiologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/New York Presbyterian and Mailman School of Public Health in New York. Email: [email protected].
This article is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and does not constitute medical or other professional advice. Always seek the advice of your qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment.
