Rabbi Firer: A Reason to Question

Each day, some 150 patients seek an unbiased second opinion from an unusual rabbi, self-educated in medicine. He can change the way his patients are treated with a single phone call, often to world renowned experts. Rabbi Elimelech Firer, a 54-year-old Orthodox Jew, has been advising in medicine for the past 30 years on a voluntary basis. With dogged determination, up-to-date knowledge and unique diagnostic abilities, he challenges doctors to think again -- about the well-being of the patient. Admired by some doctors and criticized by others, is the rabbi an emissary of good will and disinterested kindness, or does he wield too much influence that spawns dangerous preferences within the medical system?