<p>Well, they cannot pay. They are fundraising already. Even if they could pay it would be unethical for any medical professional to keep a dead body hooked up to machines…and pointless.</p>
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<p>Desecration of a corpse would still be considered cruel or morally repugnant even though they are dead. That’s why it’s a crime. I’ve seen long term ventilated persons-contractures of the limbs, horrific bed sores which can become infected and actually tunnel through the body, etc., etc., etc., and is in my opinion cruel in spite of the fact that the person is unresponsive. Even the best of care often cannot prevent some of these horrible conditions. The fact of the matter is that courts do have the power to overrule these parents. Whether or not they will remains to be seen.</p>
<p>It’s not just the money.
It’s the resources: the medical staff, the bed space, the equipment, etc. How do you “pay” for those things? You really can’t unless you bring her home and buy all your own equipment and pay for a private doctor/staff. </p>
<p>You also can’t force the family to pay if the family doesn’t have the funds. Then it goes back to everyone else. (Assuming that the family can’t pay- I obviously don’t know their finances).</p>
<p>You can place conditions on the family obviously - like they have to find a private care facility that agrees to accept their case, and they have to pay out of pocket. I am not opposed to that.</p>
<p>I guess something about the courts deciding when to take someone off life support just bothers me (barring of course cases where the person made their wishes known or the family is doing it for some sort of gain). Maybe my greater concern is that if right now the courts can make this decision for a brain dead person, tomorrow it may be for a person in a vegetative state. I am more comfortable with the family making those types of decisions.</p>
<p>Apparently, the child did have a negative cerebral blood flow study result. </p>
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<p>Above is from an article on CNN.</p>
<p>[Jahi</a> McMath still on life support as deadline looms - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/30/health/jahi-mcmath-girl-brain-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_t2]Jahi”>http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/30/health/jahi-mcmath-girl-brain-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)</p>
<p>“It’s the resources: the medical staff, the bed space, the equipment, etc. How do you “pay” for those things? You really can’t unless you bring her home and buy all your own equipment and pay for a private doctor/staff.”</p>
<p>I had a friend in high school who ended up in a vegetative state after a car accident and was kept alive for almost 15 years, until, thankfully, he finally died. He was kept at home and had all the resources you mentioned. It devastated the family financially (and they were relatively well off) as well as emotionally - the parents ended up divorcing.</p>
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<p>So far, no facility will “agree”, since it is against medical ethics. (The body needs surgery prior to transport and no doctor will perform.)</p>
<p>ACS, you’d be OK with people keeping others indefinitely on lifesupport even though they’re dead? You want people to be able to keep blood circulating, artificially, indefinitely? </p>
<p>THAT to me is a much more slippery slope than your scenario.</p>
<p>This girl is dead. This girl is not in a comma. Not in a vegetative state. She is dead. Let her rest peacefully.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>If it’s not done maliciously, they pay the costs, and it doesn’t go against the person’s wishes, I am fine with it. To oversimplify it, I don’t see how the court knows what’s better for the girl than her family in this situation. We don’t know what her wishes would have been. Since that’s the case, let her family decide.</p>
<p>The court knows what’s better in this case because the family does NOT understand what “death” is. </p>
<p>The mom believes that death is when the heart stops beating. The heart is ONLY beating because of machines. Do you really want people to be able to keep hearts beating indefinitely? That really does not seem like a slippery slope to you at all?</p>
<p>We do not let families make many decisions for a variety of reasons (which have already been covered here).</p>
<p>There is no deciding. She is dead. Her family refusing to accept that doesn’t change the fact.</p>
<p>Also, don’t we have this backwards? The court ordered the hospital to keep her on life support. The court is not issuing an order to pull the plug.</p>
<p>“The court knows what’s better in this case because the family does NOT understand what “death” is.”</p>
<p>Not to get philasophical, but none of us REALLY know what death is. </p>
<p>And while the chances of this are about 1 in a trillion (or less), people HAVE been misdiagnosed with brain death when it was actually vegetative state (while looking up the difference, I actually found cases of that happening - again, INCREDIBLY rare, but not unheard of).</p>
<p>"We do not let families make many decisions for a variety of reasons (which have already been covered here). "</p>
<p>Yes, and in those instances, there is actual HARM done. If the girl is dead, there is no HARM done to her. I think the family’s right to make the choice (the choice to keep her on life support) outweighs our distaste for what they are doing - they are NOT doing it maliciously.</p>
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I think there is potential for harm here. The case is a tragedy, but as long as she is kept in this state, her family, her friends, classmates, etc. can’t move through the normal grieving process. To me, it would be like I were also in suspended animation. That’s not psychologically healthy.<br>
She’s dead. There’s no “better for the girl”, there’s just bury her and go on.</p>
<p>So now her family can’t keep her on life support because it’s bad for her classmates? That just doesn’t hold any water with me. They might be making it worse for themselves, but that’s their choice to make.</p>
<p>I just don’t understand the eagerness to dictate to that family. The world is not going to end if we let them keep her on life support. </p>
<p>I am a big proponent of laws and abiding by established laws, but in this situation, I just think it’s too much involvement in these people’s personal decision. If they can’t raise the money or find a facility or the equipment, fine, but it should be their option to try if they want to.</p>
<p>The world is not going to end if we let a lot of things happen. That doesn’t mean we let them happen.</p>
<p>Eagerness? The girl has been dead for two weeks.</p>
<p>" I am more comfortable with the family making those types of decisions."</p>
<p>Imagine the opposite scenario: the family that does not want to deal with the long term care of a disabled person “makes the decision” to withhold medical care to a car accident victim…</p>
<p>If there is no blood flow to the brain, it means that the brain is slowly decomposing, rotting away, leaking the products of its decomposition into the nearby tissues…</p>
<p>“Imagine the opposite scenario: the family that does not want to deal with the long term care of a disabled person “makes the decision” to withhold medical care to a car accident victim…”</p>
<p>My whole argument is based on the fact that their decision is not harming the girl, who according to the doctors is dead and can’t feel anything. In your scenario, there is very real harm to a real, living person.</p>
<p>"If there is no blood flow to the brain, it means that the brain is slowly decomposing, rotting away, leaking the products of its decomposition into the nearby tissues… "</p>
<p>And if they want to take her home on life support or go to a facility or get a second opinion because they believe hers is the 1 in a trillion misdiagnosis case, LET THEM.</p>
<p>Something good could come out of this if her working organs were donated to help others.</p>
<p>Yes, well the longer this goes on it will be too late for that. Actually, it may be already.</p>