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<p>Where this analogy falls apart for me is that we do surgery on Person A for benefits to Person A, not to Person B. In the second case, we’re doing surgery on Person A (Barbie) to benefit person A (Barbie). Not Ken, no matter how much he may like it. In the first case, we’re doing surgery on Person A (Jahi McMath) to benefit person B (her parents who are understandably devastated).</p>
<p>“But to be honest, I’m more sympathetic to the parents of a 13 year old than I am with the children of a bedridden, senile 93 year old who insist on a full court press to keep Dad breathing another day. Others disagreed.”</p>
<p>Sympathies aside, these are completely different, not even comparable scenarios. The 93 yr old is senile, but not brain dead - not dead. The girl is.</p>
<p>I don’t know which of the following the parents believe:
<p>I sympathize with the third possibility, and it could be that when they’ve seen her move, they just can’t accept that they’re being told the truth.</p>
<p>It’s the fourth option that bothers me. Here’s a quote from a previous post:
I’m tempted to say this is nonsense, but I wouldn’t want to be criticized, so I’ll rather say that this position would be pernicious as a legal definition of death. It would mean, for example, that there would be few, if any, organ transplants in the future, because the donors would be “alive,” and thus the organs couldn’t be taken. I also think that it’s just pretending that we don’t know things about the brain that we now know. I suppose it’s arguable that it’s a matter of opinion, but I think brain activity is necessary for “the life of the organism as a whole.” A breathing body with a dead brain is no more a living person than is a cell culture.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t think people with a lot of money should be legally prevented from doing whatever they want with the dead bodies of their loved ones, but in this case they are using the mechanism of the law to force somebody else to do it–at least until they find another facility.</p>
<p>5 day countdown begins in less than 1 1/2 hours CDT, and let us all hope that the decedent, Jahi McMath, may finally be laid to rest in eternal peace after the 1/7/14 hearing/decision. </p>
<p>Brain dead is dead.</p>
<p>"I would argue that the parent’s desire to see their daughter continue to breathe is as much of a “benefit to a sentient being” as Barbie’s desire to have larger breasts is a benefit to Barbie (and Ken, for that matter.)’</p>
<p>That is not an argument; that is a gut reaction.</p>
<p>I’m thinking the reaction is not quite in his gut.</p>
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<p>Complicating matters, of course, is that it happened after a surgery, versus, say, a car accident. Mixed in there, I suspect there is also a belief that those who say she is dead are “on the side of” the people who “killed” her. None of us knows whether malpractice was committed or not, but you can bet this family is not sophisticated enough to understand that “risks of surgery” can mean that everything was done right but a horrible outcome can still occur, because risks have to happen to somebody.</p>
<p>All her mother has to do is google “person declared brain dead miraculously wakes up” and she will find everything she needs to have hope. I’m sure cases are distinguishable but, if she believes in miracles, I don’t know how you argue with that.</p>
<p>Jym, I read about the Alzheimer facelift when that story was first published - the S.F. Chronicle is one of the papers I subscribe to. From what I’ve said about my opinion regarding much of the medical expenditures wasted on the elderly you can imagine my response.</p>
<p>The “medical scarcity” argument has never relied on any reported shortage of ICU beds, nurses or physicians. No one has suggested that anyone has been turned away from Childrens or anywhere else because this girl is “taking up a bed.” It’s simply been the argument that “when medical resources are finite, we shouldn’t waste them on this.” My point is that we waste medical resources all the time, and as long as the people involved are paying for it no one seems to mind, no matter how silly or pointless the expenditure of medical resources might be - except here. </p>
<p>Your repetition of the term “dead body” is significant. Remember - her “body” actually is not dead - that’s a major part of the problem here. Only the tissues of her brain have been deduced to have died. People using that terminology have offended the family and their supporters - and reasonably so, in my opinion - as do the clumsily crafted statements in the hospital’s “drafted for publication” letter. The coroner? Really? Do you think the coroner is going to step up and say “Halt! You can’t take that girl away without my permission!” The hospital’s repeated reference to the girl as a “dead body” three times in the letter was the mark of a clumsy lawyer trying to make sure he won the argument by defining its terms. (And I’ve seen that many times over the years, too. This is just a very obvious example, IMHO.)</p>
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<p>I’m broadly sympathetic to this line of argument-- that medical treatments should be done to benefit the person treated and not other people-- but I think it is not quite right. Most people here think that this child’s body has been on the ventilator too long. But I doubt if we’ll get many takers for the idea that once Jahi had been determined to be brain-dead and could not be the beneficiary of any treatment, the ventilator should have been turned off, that very second.</p>
<p>California law allows a “reasonable” time for the relatives to gather and have a last goodbye. Most of us think three weeks is far beyond reasonable, but is anyone going to argue that a family shouldn’t a few hours or a day? Even though that extra time will not benefit the child?</p>
<p>If the mother believes that her daughter will miraculously wake up, why does the miracle require a ventilator?</p>
<p>I always thought brain dead was dead, and that is that. </p>
<p>Today, I did google incidences of people waking up who were declared brain dead, and yes, there are some of those situations you can read anout. </p>
<p>They exist. Did a machine malfunction? Could doctors miss something so important? I have no idea, but now I think I understand a little more why the parents haven’t given up. Miracles hapoen, but then some miracles are bigger than others. </p>
<p>I do not think this girl will be one of those miracles.</p>
<p>In the strictest sense, as someone else analogized, her cells are alive. We don’t really know the status of her other organs, but its reasonable to assume the medical team is carefully monitoring all the stuff nrsdb4 described pages ago that have to keep the systems from crashing. So when mincing words, technically the body is still being kept functioning, and some of the organs are “alive” in that the tissue is being provided artificially with bloodflow, which provides the oxygen also artificially provided. Perhaps its semantics to determine whether being kept functioning completely by these external artificial means constitutes being “alive”. More fodder for the ethics classes. So when the science fiction movies become real, and human bodies are controlled by computer brains, will those individuals be considered “alive”?</p>
<p>CF, I’ve read that typically, family members are given the time they need to gather the family around. This is usually only a day or so, unless organ donation is a consideration, in which case there is understandably more urgency. If family are flying in, I would bet that most facilities would respect this. Most hospitals with which I’ve been associated try very hard to help families in this position. The one time I witnessed almost immediate cessation of life support was in the case of a man who had shot himself in the head, and relatives declined to come to the ICU. As soon as he was declared brain dead, support was stopped.</p>
<p>Samurai, in the instances I have read about of someone surviving after being declared brain dead, you go on to read that there were things which were not done that should have been done (doing the tests before sedative drugs were completely cleared, not doing all the required tests or not doing them properly) or things that were done that shouldn’t have been done (in one case, the tests were done too quickly, against SOP, and the brain swelling masked the responses which would have been documented if they waited the proper interval before beginning the testing). So these patients did not survive brain death, they were never brain dead to begin with.</p>
<p>In this particular case, from what I have read, all protocols were followed and these tests were done more than once at proper intervals.</p>
<p>Rats. Just lost the long post I wrote b/c the server was busy. Will try to recreate what I recall. I forget the first part, but the second part was that, fwiw (which may not be much), there are times where there simply are no beds available. When DS shattered his femur in So Cal , the local hospital at the slopes was supposed to send him by helicopter to Loma Linda Hospital, but there were <em>no beds available.</em> So he went on a very long and painful ambulance ride around the mountain to Victorville, where fortunately the dr on call was an excellent orthopedic trauma surgeon, and they’d just gotten a new fracture table in, which he was excited to use. I must say I am glad I didnt know then what I know now about what could have happened should the bone have nicked the femoral artery when it fractured, or when they moved him.</p>
<p>And anyone else following the demise of Ariel Sharon, after 8 years in a coma? He has been able to breathe on his own, but was nourished by a feeding tube.</p>
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<p>That is actually the first thought I had when I heard about this case. Since I think believing in miracles is irrational, I would not be coming from the right place to make that argument.</p>
<p>Here’s more about tomorrow…</p>
<p>[Talks</a> ordered in California brain dead girl case - U.S. News](<a href=“U.S. News: Latest Breaking Stories, Video, and Photos on American Politics, Economy, and Society | NBC News”>U.S. News: Latest Breaking Stories, Video, and Photos on American Politics, Economy, and Society | NBC News)</p>
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<p>It’d be great if the two sides could come to some agreement. How does this talk, overseen by a federal magistrate, work?</p>
<p>This is just about the transport issue, right?</p>