Medical ethicists criticizing facility keeping Jahi McMath on ventilator

[davidn3600]

Medical ethicists are criticizing the unnamed facility that agreed to keep the body of 13-year-old Jahi McMath on a ventilator after transferring her from an Oakland hospital, saying it will only delay the inevitable while potentially causing long-term financial and emotional harm to her family.

Jahi's case has been widely criticized by medical experts who have emphasized that people who are declared brain-dead are no longer alive. At least three neurologists confirmed Jahi was unable to breathe on her own, had no blood flow to her brain and had no sign of electrical activity three days after she underwent surgery Dec. 9 to remove her tonsils, adenoids and uvula at Children's Hospital Oakland and went into cardiac arrest, causing extensive hemorrhaging in her brain.

After waging a public relations battle with the hospital, Jahi's family members won a court order keeping her on a ventilator, and eventually permission to transfer her to an undisclosed care facility. Medical ethicists are blaming the operators of that facility for perpetuating misconceptions of brain death that have dogged the Jahi case since her family went public.

"What could they be thinking?" Laurence McCullough, a professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told USA Today. "Their thinking must be disordered, from a medical point of view. ... There is a word for this: crazy."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-jahi-mcmath-ventilator-20140113,0,3203320.story?track=rss#axzz2qQaNm8a0

You have to wonder if this facility is taking advantage of this situation. They could be keeping her on the ventilator while milking any donations that family gets.

Insurance would have stopped paying long ago, I would think.

[niyad]

1. it is a pretty good guess that she is at that new beginnings place, the one run by the hairdresser,

and advised, and supported, at least in part, by the terri shiavo foundation, and terri's brother, who does not believe brain death is real.

[Travis_0004]

2. I wonder if the medical facility is hoping for money from the lawsuit

There will likely be a lawsuit, possibly with a multi million dollar settlement. The care facility might be willing to keep Jahi with the expectaion of getting some money for cost if the settlemnt comes through.

I don't know all the details, and I don't know if there will be a successful lawsuit. (sometimes even if a hospital does everything right people still die). Even if the family wins a lawsuit, I realize nothing can replace their daughter, but it would be a shame to see them have to pay a large portion of the money to a care facility that really can't do anything. Delaying an autopsy might also make a lawsuit more difficult to win.