It appears that the media has tried to make this some sort of controversial Terry Schiavo story.
If you haven’t heard, Jahi McMath, a 13 year old girl, while undergoing a routine tonsillectomy suffered a traumatic hemmorage and cardiac arrest and is technically brain dead, according to the hospital where her body is currently being kept alive via a ventilator.
The hospital considers her to be dead and were scheduled to terminate the life support earlier this week, but a judge granted the family a stay of a week to give the family time to seek alternatives.
The above referenced articles seems to declare the family has won an order to allow them to take Jahi’s body to another facility. But the hospital has offered that solution since the beginning. They just don’t want to be the facility to be the one keeping her body alive, along with all the liability that goes with it.
I highly doubt this family can afford the care that will be needed to keep their daughter’s body alive. I know that I couldn’t, and probably 99% of American’s couldn’t either.
It is obvious that the parents are still in grief and appear to be stuck in the “denial” phase. But is there really a valid debate here as to whether a hospital should be forced to keep treating a brain dead patient?
The question is why the hospital didn’t immediately disconnect the life support machinery when they realized she was brain dead–instead of waiting and asking for permission (I don’t understand the history of exactly what happened)?
Does everyone here think the girl’s death was unavoidable–or instead that the doctors and/or hospital made major errors?
Because it’s usually less traumatic for the family to give them some time to assimilate the reality that their loved one is in fact dead before the machines are switched off. Most families come to terms with the news within a couple of days.
There’s no way to know, as we don’t have enough information to make that assessment.
That’s not a value judgment I am comfortable making about another family. If she’s irreversibly brain-dead either way, then she’s not suffering. And keeping her alive simply because the family wants to (it makes them feel better) is fine with me.
But the equipment that keeps her body warm (she’s not alive by any rational definition) is equipment that can be used to treat living patients.
I’ve no problem with the family finding and paying for alternate arrangements, but I do have some issues with the family expecting the hospital to indefinitely deal with the situation.
If the family’s paying for it, I don’t suppose it’s anyone else’s business. Is the family paying for it? If taxpayers are expected to foot the bill, then no - sorry, but there’s too many living people who need the money more to waste on a project that’s not sparing anyone grief, just prolonging it.
Bonus question: Will a thirteen year old go through puberty if her body is kept beating but her brain is dead?
It is my understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong) that her heart is beating while she’s on a ventilator, and her skin remains warm to the touch. Is that an irrational definition of life?
Even if it is, do you think it’s fair to force a grieving family to be rational in the face of such terrible circumstances? Let them do what they want.
To me, it is not particularly interesting or relevant that the hospital already declared her dead. People have returned to life after being declared legally dead before. So now we’re just arguing over what signs of life constitute sufficiency to overturn an official declaration of death.
Ariel Sharon is in a persistent vegetative state, as was Karen Ann Quinlan. Jahi McMath is not - she’s dead. She has no brain activity at all. There is zero chance that she will come back from this. Brain death is not the same as being in a coma.
Define “fair”. I’m serious about that, by the way. “Fair” is subjective.
I’d say it was unfair to other people that they receive less medical attention than they otherwise would because of this situation. My version of fair means other people get a better shot at more life because the hospital has more resources (equipment and staff) available to help them.
Does the situation suck, especially for the family? Absolutely! But that’s poor reason to justify the suffering - even if only potential - of even more people.
I understand it’s human nature to focus on one little girl whose face we’ve seen rather than a bunch of faceless, nameless folk, but human nature is often stupid. By the way, this is exactly what I meant by an irrational definition of life. Your very argument is an appeal to emotion, and one that aims to ignore any additional human cost that decision might require.
She won’t survive that long. A brain dead body (as opposed to a person who has suffered profound brain damage but still has a working brainstem, like Terry Schaivo) can’t be maintained indefinitely on life support. We’re looking at a couple of months, at the absolute max.
If she is a drain on the state, or taking away resources from others,* then please show this before arguing from that perspective. You are merely speculating.
When you are arguing to revoke the medical decision-making ability of legal adults who are of sound mind/body, the burden of proof is on *your *side to prove that it ought to be done. Leaving things the way they currently are is the default situation and does not bear any burden of proof–that is, parents are legally allowed to make medical decisions on behalf of their child.
I’m not arguing from a religious or pro-life POV. I’m arguing that in the interests of compassion, nobody but the legal guardians should be permitted to remove a minor child from life support. It is not hurting her to be kept on a ventilator in the absence of cranial activity. The parents may have wholly irrational reasons for wanting to keep her on life support–religious reasons, the comfort of seeing her every day, keeping guilt at bay. But even if their reasons are irrational, that does **not **invalidate them. Humans are naturally irrational creatures. The only reason I would find acceptable for removing the parents’ medical agency would be if they were harming their child.
In the absence of harm to the child, there is no reason to intervene and make medical decisions in place of the parents. End of story.
*Not that doing so necessarily justifies the decision to take her off life support over her parents’ objections. There are plenty of children (mentally handicapped, physically disabled, poor, just plain unlucky) who utilize a disproportionate amount of medical resources compared to the average. Who are you–who is any one of us, wholly unfamiliar with those people, their lives, and their values–to say that their families don’t deserve to have the right to choose to treat them?
It’s not a matter of letting them “do what they want”, it’s a matter of who is going to pay for this. No one is entitled to “do what they want” on the public dime.
Look, if they have the finances to pay for whatever it is they need, do you really think some government official is going to say: No, we can’t allow you to pay for this, we’re pulling the plug.
How long should the public dime last after being declared brain dead? This isn’t sarcasm, I’m actually wondering: What is the cut off, for you? Immediate? A week?
My opinion is that if they are planning to have her examined by another medical staff, the hospital should let her, which by all accounts they were going to. There may have been a time frame that the hospital was ready to accept (“You have one week to move her or we pull the plug.”) that the family couldn’t deal with. Either way, a few extra days isn’t going to cause the end of the world while the family tries to find another hospital.
My other question that I haven’t seen answered: Why didn’t they just move her when the hospital offered instead of getting an injunction against the hospital? And, if you wanted a second opinion, does she even need to be transported? Take the records to an alternate doctor and then have the altdoc do a physical exam, right?
She’s already been examined by multiple physicians, including the chief pediatric neurologist at Stanford University (who, importantly, is not affiliated with the hospital in question). They have all reached the same conclusion: the child has experienced complete brain death. Despite this, the family’s stance has not changed.
The family had no place to move her to. As for the consultation, there was no need to move the child; the consultants came to her.
I feel very fortunate that I don’t have to form an opinion about this. I can just sit on the sidelines and hope that things don’t get any worse for the people directly involved. This is a luxury.
Well, yeah, in that case I think the family has gone over the edge. I know that it’s tragic to lose a child, but they did everything they could for the girl.
Do you think she’s simply left alone in the room and untended? At a bare minimum, there are staff members who have to tend to the equipment. Further, also at a bare minimum, hospital staff have to deal with the press presence.
Are you suggesting that these staffers have no other work they could be doing otherwise? That’s patently ridiculous. And that’s at a bare minimum assuming the equipment isn’t otherwise needed, which is unlikely in a metropolitan area like the Bay Area.
As I’ve noted before, I have no problems with the family making outside arrangements to keep the child’s body functioning. I do have a problem with the family attempting to force the hospital to provide such services.
I don’t know… maybe we need some kind of a panel to decide these things.
There were complications involved in moving her. She needed a traichiotomy (IIRC) and a feeding tube inserted. The hospital where she was staying was unwilling to do perform those procedures.
