Jahi McMath's family searches for options as life-support cutoff looms
By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
While many people get their New Year's countdown clocks ready,
Jahi McMath's family is scrambling as a darker deadline looms.
A judge's ruling will allow a hospital to disconnect life support
machines at 5 p.m. Monday from the 13-year-old girl, whom doctors declared
brain dead after she suffered complications from tonsil surgery earlier this
month. Jahi's family, who wants to transfer her somewhere else, told CNN affiliate KGO that they spent Sunday
working the phones, trying to line up another option.
The case has drawn national attention and sparked protests from
some local leaders who say the hospital that treated her should have provided
better care.
Medical ethicists, meanwhile, say the high-profile case fuels a
misperception: that "brain
death" is somehow not as final as cardiac death, even though, by
definition, it is. The case is "giving the impression that dead people can
come back to life," Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical
Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, told CNN last week. But Jahi's family members maintain that they're hoping for a
miracle and want to transfer the girl from Children's Hospital Oakland to
another facility. A statement released by
family members Saturday and provided to KGO says they are
weighing several options.
"Our attorney is in discussions with two facilities that have
expressed preliminary approval for accepting Jahi on a ventilator," the
statement said. "One is in Southern California, the other is in New
York."
Doug Straus, an attorney representing Children's Hospital Oakland,
said in a letter to the family's lawyer Sunday that officials are still
awaiting specifics from the family. "To date, there has been no communication from any facility
named by you regarding a transfer or requirements for transfer with any of the
medical professionals at Children's. The family has not identified any facility
with which Children's can have this dialogue. Nor have we been provided with a
transportation plan or coroner authorization," he wrote. "As your
email and your statements about the facility in the Los Angeles area
acknowledge, discussion about performing medical procedures upon a dead body
presents unusual and complicated questions. Until there is a definite
commitment by a facility to accept Jahi's body upon specified terms, I don't
think I can tackle those issues. Please let me know if the family is able to
identify a facility."
Jahi was declared brain dead by doctors at the hospital on
December 12, three days after tonsil surgery. Family members and hospital officials fought over her future in
court. Last week, a judge ruled she was brain dead and urged both sides to work
together to resolves the situation.
But the sparring showed no sign of slowing over the weekend, with
family members sharply criticizing the hospital's handling of the matter.
"We wish to acknowledge that Jahi's case, and our stance
regarding her right to life, and her mother's right to make decisions regarding
her child, has stirred a vibrant, sometimes polarizing, national debate. This
was never our intention," the family's statement said. "We have our
strong religious convictions and set of beliefs and we believe that, in this
country, a parent has the right to make decisions concerning the existence of
their child: not a doctor who looks only at lines on a paper, or reads the cold
black and white words on a law that says 'brain dead' and definitely not a
doctor who runs the facility that caused the brain death in the first
place."
The hospital's statement Sunday said they were supporting Jahi's
family.
"We continue to do so despite their lawyer's criticizing the
very hospital that all along has been working hard to be accommodating to this
grieving family," the hospital said.
See now that I,
even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make
alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my
hand.
Mat 10:29
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.
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