Legally-dead? Or "dead-dead"?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I wrote about this before, but the Jahi McMath saga continues, with the parents trying to find some location to take the child, and the hospital\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/01\/legally-dead-or-dead-dead.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Legally-dead? 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{"id":676,"date":"2014-01-03T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/01\/legally-dead-or-dead-dead.html"},"modified":"2014-01-03T11:21:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T11:21:00","slug":"legally-dead-or-dead-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/01\/legally-dead-or-dead-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"Legally-dead? Or “dead-dead”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I wrote about this before<\/a>, but the Jahi McMath saga continues, with the parents trying to find some location to take the child, and the hospital insisting that they won\u2019t insert a feeding tube because it\u2019s wrong to operate on a dead body. The latest update<\/a> is that the hospital and family have entered mediation to extend the court-ordered ventilator, while the family tries to line up a doctor to insert a feeding tube. <\/p>\n

I am not a neurologist nor even a well-read laypeson, but the hospital\u2019s behavior is callous, to say the least. They claim it\u2019s unethical to operate on a corpse \u2014 but yet, it\u2019s done all the time: it\u2019s just called medical research. Isn\u2019t that, after all, how medical students first learn? It\u2019s also inappropriate to say that her care takes needed resources away from other patients \u2014 I find it unlikely that any individual patient is unable to receive treatment because there is no doctor, ventilator, or hospital room available. And a brain-dead individual hardly needs an ICU room, any more than a PVS patient would. <\/p>\n

Their persistent use of the word \u201ccorpse\u201d is also a bit suspect, given that that word, in plain English, refers to a decaying body. And it\u2019s clear that they have a conflict of interest, if they believe that ultimately the girl\u2019s costs could be laid at their feet due to a malpractice suit, and maintaining her would ultimately result in higher costs than just a simple wrongful-death suit. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also read repeatedly that her body is decaying just as any other corpse would \u2014 but I\u2019ve only read this in blog comments, not from experts. And take a look at this report<\/a> from 2012, about a brain-dead pregnant woman maintained by life support for a full month to allow her twins to develop enough to be delivered and survive. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a striking comment: the doctor in the case \u201csaid an important ethical issue in cases like these is whether a brain-dead woman would suffer by being kept on a respirator and undergoing a C-section.\u201d Suffer? How can a corpse suffer? <\/p>\n

This makes the situation feel all the murkier. Is a declaration of death in brain-death cases really just a legal concept, like legally-blind (when the individual may or may not have some remaining vision), to enable us to avoid dismembering living people for their organs, and to make the decision-process easier for a family faced with \u201cpulling the plug\u201d? <\/p>\n

(Here\u2019s another even longer case: 3 months<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

After all, what would happen if we rename \u201cbrain death\u201d as \u201cirreverible and complete cessation of brain function\u201d but death was defined the way it always had been, as that state after which the only thing left is for the body to decay? <\/p>\n

That being said, of course, at this point so many specialists have examined the McMath girl and enough time has elapsed that the parents really ought to recognize that the time to hope for a miracle is nearly over, or, rather, has arrived, as they certainly can pray that the girl will breathe on her own at the time that the ventilator is shut off.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"