Israel: Transplants, organ donations, Rabbis, Doctors -- update

Excellent, informative article by Shahar Ilan in Haaretz describing the current state of play in Israel regarding halakhic-medical definition-of-death debates and the consequences for organ donation / transplants in Israel. It seems as though -- as in most things -- resolution depends on trust and on relationships.
Israel does not have a great reputation in the organ donation field; reticence about donations means that the demand far outstrips the supply, occasionally creating ugly situations.

• While young Miriam and Danny are sunning in Tenerife, most of the time all I can do is point to interesting stuff rather than go into long Shaviv-type exegeses and discussions. I do plan, however, to post on the origins of the word 'distaff', which popped up from unknown depths of my memory to feature in a recent posting, and which has occasioned a couple of (off-line) queries ....