Jahi McMath, girl at center of debate over brain death, has died.

KojiKnight · Jun 30, 2018

https://wgntv.com/2018/06/29/jahi-m...debate-over-brain-death-has-dies-mother-says/

Jahi McMath, an Oakland teenager whose brain-death following a routine tonsil surgery in 2013 created national headlines, died on June 22, according to the family’s attorney.

She was 13 when she underwent surgery to treat pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that made her stop breathing in her sleep and caused other medical problems.

Nearly five years later, “Jahi died as the result of complications associated with liver failure,” the statement from attorney Christopher Dolan said.

She underwent surgery on December 9, 2013 at the Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. After the procedure to remove her tonsils, adenoids and extra sinus tissue Jahi was alert and talking to doctors and even requested a Popsicle.

According to her family, Jahi was in the intensive care unit when she started to bleed and went into cardiac arrest. On December 12, 2013 she was declared brain-dead. Her family disagreed with the declaration.

While I feel for her family, especially her mother, this was the inevitable conclusion. For nearly 5 years this poor girl's corpse has been kept 'living' with ventilators and other mechanisms all in the hopes that some day her brain was going to rebuild itself?

You can certainly make the case to be cautious on some level because brain death has been misdiagnosed before, there is no way that this many doctors and constant monitoring could have been wrong in this instance.

Occam · Jun 30, 2018

It makes sense that Republicans are against allowing brain dead people to die, otherwise Trump and most of the party would be gone.

Anyway, it's terrible to keep the body of a dead person artificially alive for years.

Mona · Jun 30, 2018

Occam said:
It makes sense that Republicans are against allowing brain dead people to die, otherwise Trump and most of the party would be gone.

Fucked up, but I giggled

Moral Panic · Jun 30, 2018

Occam said:
Anyway, it's terrible to keep the body of a dead person artificially alive for years.

Why do you say that?

BLEEN · Jun 30, 2018

My grandma had a stroke and was in a coma for like 5 or 6 months. We chose to keep her hooked up to machines and stuff because the docs weren't positive if she was going to wake up. So we took an expensive chance but in the end, she passed. I don't see what's wrong with keeping hope for a loved one. People have come back from crazier shit.

A bit of a dif. scenario than the OP of course.

KojiKnight · Jun 30, 2018

Moral Panic said:
Why do you say that?

Setting aside the young girl for a second, her mother's vane attempts to keep her daughter alive cost her and her family their home, their life savings, etc all spurred on by less-than-ethical doctors and lawyers who knew it was all for naught.

BLEEN said:
My grandma had a stroke and was in a coma for like 5 or 6 months. We chose to keep her hooked up to machines and stuff because the docs weren't positive if she was going to wake up. So we took an expensive chance but in the end, she passed. I don't see what's wrong with keeping hope for a loved one. People have come back from crazier shit.

Waking up or not from a coma is not the same as being pronounced clinically brain dead. There is no coming back from brain dead. If you're brain dead, you are dead. There is nothing left of what makes up 'you' left. It's just a shell.

BLEEN · Jun 30, 2018

KojiKnight said:
Setting aside the young girl for a second, her mother's vane attempts to keep her daughter alive cost her and her family their home, their life savings, etc all spurred on by less-than-ethical doctors and lawyers who knew it was all for naught.

Waking up or not from a coma is not the same as being pronounced clinically brain dead. There is no coming back from brain dead. If you're brain dead, you are dead. There is nothing left of what makes up 'you' left. It's just a shell.

Yeah, I know. I did a ninja edit.

deepFlaw · Jun 30, 2018

KojiKnight said:
Setting aside the young girl for a second, her mother's vane attempts to keep her daughter alive cost her and her family their home, their life savings, etc all spurred on by less-than-ethical doctors and lawyers who knew it was all for naught.

Waking up or not from a coma is not the same as being pronounced clinically brain dead. There is no coming back from brain dead. If you're brain dead, you are dead. There is nothing left of what makes up 'you' left. It's just a shell.

Is some of that from prior news on this? The article says the lawyer’s working pro-bono and makes it sounds like she sold everything to move to be with her daughter.

I mean, I 100% believe it happened the way you say and obviously doing this wouldn’t be cheap; it’s already hard reading the mother’s claims that her daughter “knew” what she was doing knowing that she was being taken advantage of. Just trying to figure out that bit.

Tovarishch Nix · Jun 30, 2018

Always sad to see life snuffed out. RIP Jahi.

That said, my personal opinion on brain death:

Everyone knows this is an unrecoverable medical condition and the person is gone.
Just let them die.

This has nothing to do with someone's "pro life" attitude cause that person is being kept alive by machines.

deepFlaw · Jun 30, 2018

Googling got me this; the legal stuff around this is... interesting? Complicated? Completely tragic?

I feel conflicted about the family’s role in all this as they’ve been put in such a painful situation, but I can’t see them/their lawyer being a resource for others to fall into this same, expensive, tragic, exploitable hole as a good thing.

Daitokuji · Jun 30, 2018

There was an article in the New Yorker about her a few months ago: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die

Such a tragedy

Weegian · Jun 30, 2018

Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I recommend everybody read this New Yorker story on McMath:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die

boris_feinbrand · Jun 30, 2018

Poor girl.

FriendlyNPC · Jun 30, 2018

Keeping people alive in that kind of state is an affront to human dignity.

Deffers · Jun 30, 2018

God rest her and help the family. I hope the parents recover.

a Master Ninja · Jun 30, 2018

This is an extreme example of an all too common phenomenon: families placing their needs over what is best for their dying/dead loved one.

There is no coming back from braindead. That's why it's "legally dead" in almost every state.

SugarNoodles · Jun 30, 2018

How much money was spent keeping her "alive" for 5 years?

deepFlaw · Jun 30, 2018

Weegian said:
Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I recommend everybody read this New Yorker story on McMath:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die

I read all of this, and appreciated that look at it and the historical information it gives.

I do feel a little weird about how it presents some information, though, and wished it dug into it a bit more- specifically, it seems to entertain the mother’s belief that Jahi’s responding to prompts for a while before it brings in that other experts had said she couldn’t even process sound. It’s not like she ignores that later when they sees Jahi herself - she talks about the family experiencing a group delusion of a sort - but it feels a bit weird to not bring that part up right away.