A public battle has ensued after a family of a 13-year old girl and their local hospital disagreed on what constitutes "brain death".
The family of JahiMcMath took the girl to the Children's Hospital Oakland for treatment of sleep anea and other illnesess. Weeks after the procedure, the child did not gain consciousness as expected and the doctors put her on life support.
Her heart was beating but the hospital said that tests showed that there was no activity in her brain anymore, so the child was declared dead under the California law. The hospital also told the family that they were going to remove the life support system.
On Friday, Judge EveloGrillo of the Alameda County Superior Court, issued a restraining order for the girl's mother, ordering both parties to get a third-party neurologist to shed some light on the dispute. The report from the neurologist will be used to decide whether to continue the restraining order or not.
The hospital maintained their stand on the issue; the restraining order should be revoked. Citing privacy laws, they declined to comment further on the issue.
Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy Jeffrey Kahn of the Johns Hopkins University's Berman Institute of Bioethics told the Wall Street Journal: "From a public perspective, we understand death to be that the heart has stopped beating and the person has stopped breathing."
He further explained that, for the mother, seeing her daughter warm and knowing that her heart is still beating may cause some confusion on the true condition of the patient. "But "by policy and law we have said the definition is [brain death] and she qualifies," Dr. Kahn added."We don't deliver health care" to dead people."
The dispute brings back memories of the case of Terri Schiavo who died after the hospital removed her feeding tube in 2006. Schiavo, from Florida, became the subject of the media's attention after her husband has requested the hospital to terminate her life support after doctors ruled out that she had irreversible brain damage. The argument ran for almost 15 years.
