Letter by the Badatz of the Eda HaCharedit Opposing the "Murder" Ensuing from Heart and Liver Transplants

Letter by the Badatz of the Eda HaCharedit, signed by the Ga'avad R. Yitzchak Ya'akov Weiss, the Ra'avad R. Moshe Aryeh Freund, R. Yisrael Moshe Dushinsky, R. Yisrael Ya'akov Fisher, R. Binyamin Rabinowitz and R. Avraham David Horowitz. Jerusalem, Iyar 1986.
Sharp, trenchant words against the "new terrible decree - giving a free hand to hospital doctors to perform heart and liver transplants…The doctors remove organs for transplants from a dying body, while the person is still alive and the heart is beating and he is still breathing, claiming that the transplant cannot be performed unless the organs are removed while the person is still alive…This is genuine murder by Jewish law…".
The subject of heart and other major organ transplants involving a live donor is a major ethic and halachic question. Most of the poskim of our times prohibited this (R. Y. S. Elyashiv, R. S. Z. Auerbach, R. M. Feinstein, R. Y. Weiss, and others prohibited it also in the cases of "brain death"). This is an authentic document signed by R. Weiss, author of Minchat Yitzchak who was one of the leading rabbis barring these transplants.
Official stationery, 27.5 cm. Handwriting of the "dayanim's scribe" [R. Breitstein] and signed by the dayanim. Fair-poor condition. Fungus and wear damages, restored with paper. Mildew and fungus stains.