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cause pikuach nefesh sets aside the entire Torah. For pikuach nefesh, 8 stand this, because certainly the prohibition of stealing is allowed in
it would even be permitted to eat pig, all the more so to raise them.
Proof for this comes from the words of the Tosfos (ibid, 82b, s.v. lo)
who ask: Why do we need a special prohibition against raising pigs?
We can learn it from the law in Tractate Shevi’is (7:3), which states
that it is prohibited to do business with impure things! They answer
that while it is permissible to raise impure animals in order to anoint
skins with their fat, it is prohibited to raise pigs even for the purpose
of profiting from their fat. If it were forbidden to raise pigs even for
cases of pikuach nefesh then Tosfos would have written so.
But in Tractate Baba Kamma (80a) it says that in the land of Israel
it is forbidden to raise small animals in populated areas because of
the mitzvah of living in the land of Israel. The Gemara relates the
story of a pious person who would groan from the pain in his heart.
The physicians declared that “there is no way to fix this, other than by
suckling warm milk every morning.” A goat was brought to him and
fastened to the base of his bed, and he sucked from it every morning.
After some days, his colleagues came to visit him, but as soon as they
saw the goat fastened to the legs of his bed, they turned back and
said, “An armed thief is in the house of this man and we came to visit
him?” They investigated and did not find any fault in him except the
sin with this goat. He too, while dying, declared that “I know that I
am free of all sin, other than the sin with the goat, where I disregarded
the words of my friends.”
The Kovetz Shi’urim (Baba Kamma #88) writes (Tractate Kes-
ubos 60) that someone groaning in pain is not considered as being
in danger, and this Gemara proves the same. If this pious man was
considered dangerously ill, he would certainly be allowed to raise an
animal in his home, because nothing stands in the way of pikuach
nefesh. In the Shitah Mekubetzes, in the name of Meiri, however, he
writes that the pious man was in danger, as implied by the words of
the physicians “there is no way to fix this….” Nevertheless, he should
have ruled stringently since the remedy for him would cause a loss to
someone else. The Kovetz Shi’urim concludes: It is difficult to under-
226 1 Medical-HalacHic Responsa of Rav ZilbeRstein
the face of danger.
According to the words of the Kovetz Shi’urim, in our case, since
one would be raising the pigs in order to save someone from danger,
therefore it is permissible to raise them. It is appropriate to have the
pigs acquired by a gentile. Then, even though a Jew works with them,
he is not considered “cursed is the one who raises pigs.”

Is it Proper Not to Tell a Patient that he had Pig
Valves Implanted in his Heart?
It says in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim #328:14): If a dangerously
ill patient needs meat, one slaughters for him on Shabbos. We do not
say: let him eat a non-kosher carcass. The Mishnah Berurah explains
(ibid, 39) that there are many reasons given for this. One of them is
lest he be disgusted to eat a carcass (neveilah), and endanger himself
further by refraining to eat from it (as explained in Rosh, Yoma Ch. 8
#14). In the Talmud Yerushalmi (Terumos 8:3) it states: It happened
that donkey drivers entered a hotel, asked for lentils to eat, and re-
ceived them. They asked for lentils a second time, and they received
them again. “The first ones were better than these,” they told the hotel
owners. “This is because we discovered the spinal column of a snake
in the first batch, so did not want to give you any more of it,” the own-
ers responded. The donkey drivers were so disgusted that they died.
The Pnei Moshe, writes that from this we learn that if a person does
not know what he ate, he will not be harmed even if it is something
disgusting which he hates. But if he is told, he may be harmed since
he is disgusted by the memory of it.
From here, we can learn that one should not reveal to a Jew that
a pig valve was transplanted into his heart, lest he feel revulsion and
be harmed. Also, in the above case of the premature baby, it seems to
Medications and Heart Valves from Pigs 2 227