Posted on 01/02/2014 1:08:18 PM PST by Anton.Rutter
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California hospital is unwilling to allow an outside doctor to fit a 13-year-old declared brain dead after tonsil surgery with the breathing and feeding tubes that would allow her to be safely transferred to another facility, its lawyer said Tuesday.
Children's Hospital Oakland will not permit the procedures to be performed on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of doctors who have examined her, lawyer Douglas Straus wrote in a letter to the girl's family.
"Performing medical procedures on the body of a deceased human being is simply not something Children's Hospital can do or ask its staff to assist in doing," he said.
The refusal appeared to reverse the position articulated Monday by a hospital spokesman. He said the hospital would allow a doctor retained by the family to insert a feeding tube and to replace the oral ventilator keeping Jahi's heart beating with a tracheal tube — surgical procedures that would stabilize Jahi if she is moved to a facility willing to keep caring for her.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Whoops! Nurse’s = Nurses
It's a moot point as the family has not been able to find a physician willing to perform this surgery.
"The family has pleaded on Facebook and Twitter for help to find a physician willing to perform both surgeries for Jahi, but so far no one has stepped forward..."
And FWIW, this New York facility, New Beginnings, is an outpatient care center operated by a former hairdresser who offers a "holistic approach" to treating traumatic brain injuries. There isn't a single MD on their Board of Directors. Their website is currently soliciting $5000 in donations to install an electrically-operated door to the entrance of their office.
Argument by authority, eh?
I have discussed physiology, you law and rhetoric - hardly have you made medical or scientific arguments, by your own admission.
You claim to know a lot about her condition. Perhaps you can tell us how you are privy to such detail You have apparently seen her medical records. That’s probably where you saw the results from the brain analyzing machine that can tell when a brain is liquified vs being jellied or mushy or A-OK.
Thank you so much for your kind words. There is one subtle difference. In the patient you described, you found that his cerebral cortex had vanished...thought, emotion, sense of history. BUT (and here is the difference) you patient still had a functional brain stem — all the reflexes, breathing, heartbeat, endocrine function, was still preserved. He COULD live independently of full support. In the case of Jahi, she has lost not only the advanced brain (biconvex view on imagery), but her midbrain and low brain are also dead. Brain death legally is termed WHOLE BRAIN DEATH, which is an excellent point you bring out in your post. Poor, sweet little girl is dead precisely as a function of WHOLE BRAIN DEATH. There are lots of partial brain deaths — stroke, alzeheimer’s, and voting democratic (which arguably is almost whole brain death — tragedy is that the brain stem can still pull a voting lever.)
"He who knows what he knows not is wise, follow him...He who knows not what he knows not is a fool -- shun him".
It is evident you know not what you know not. All the best of luck, but also remember it is better to be silent and thought a fool than speak up and remove all doubt. I have no doubt when it comes to your statements, and by extension...you. Good day.
We do have brain analyzing machines. These are called reflexes. They do not depend on whether one is awake, sleeping, ill or well. When the brain is functioning “alive” these reflexes are intact. Loss of the reflex reveals no brain function.
In addition there are multiple scans that can be done that prove no blood flow to the crucial areas of the brain, EEGs that can show lack of electrical activity in the brain, etc.
It seems you do not want to hear the truth, just hold to your own opinion. As is famously said, you have the right to be wrong.
Forget about him — he wallows in his or her own ignorance. Much better suited for him or her to be at DU, where how you feel must be the fact.
Why do you need credentials.
I never argue by authority. Persons who do so are invariably incompetent, Doctor.
The issues are 2:
1) The girl is not a corpse.
2) Does the family have the right to decide on further treatment? Sub-issues arise from the answer to this.
The family does have the right, but they have not filed the appropriate paperwork nor found a facility. Have you no reading comprehension skills? Sheesh! Since they can’t find one, why don’t they make arrangements to take her home? Oh, that would mean mama would have to take care of her. Since her mom indulged her to obesity by failing to cook and exercise with her therefore preventing this entire issue anyway, I’m doubting mama wants to take care of her now.
Many people have tried to have a reasonable argument and discussion with this poster. It is a waste of time, as there is no reason or discussion, just unvalidated, incorrect statements he or she masks in the facade of some sort of rationality. Many have seen the transparency of his or her veneer, save your breath and frustration, for one should not respond to a person who violates the fundamentals of good debate, honesty, reason, and good will.
And certainly the family can arrange private transport to the house and private ventilator service and pay for it, but it will be at their own expense as insurance terminates at death, and the girl is dead. If they have a macabre obsession to ventilate a corpse, then I suppose that is their decision, but no one else should have to pay for it. Maybe ifinnegan would like to pay for it? Or defray the million dollar a month cost that this will certainly incur?
I see you use the term corpse again.
This s the crux of the discussion and the reason for your retreat in that there s no way for you defend the use of the term and seem too prideful admit it is not accurate.
You insist on using this term inaccurately to present a distorted representation of brain death and the situation of this grl’s body.
This took place in December 12.
A corpse would have no benefit from a ventilator.
Would have no circulating blood.
Would not be able to be maintained at normal body temperature.
Would not be able to maintain physiological and metabolic function of organs or other systems.
A corpse that died on Dec 12 would not be able to donate organs or tissues.
You are quite remiss in your responsibilities in using such disinformative language.
“Oh, that would mean mama would have to take care of her. Since her mom indulged her to obesity by failing to cook and exercise with her therefore preventing this entire issue anyway, I’m doubting mama wants to take care of her now.”
That’s pretty nasty.
There’s no way you can know this.
This spitefulness says a lot about where you’re coming from.
At least the gas doctor portrays crocodile tears.
Gas passers are little gods, in their own minds. They take a patient to death and bring them back ... in their minds.
“And certainly the family can arrange private transport to the house and private ventilator service and pay for it”
Yes.
We are in full agreement and you have finally addressed the actual issue which I first addressed to you stating your comment describing brain death diagnosis was beside the point.
It took time, but you finally got there. Congrats, Doctor.
You have claimed victory in ignorance to the issue. You have not addressed the macabre nor legal ramifications of continue to ventilate a dead person. In America you have the freedom to make irrational decisions. It does not change that the child is dead, nor does it change any of the science. I do not agree with you in any way shape or form. You fail to address the queries around accepting the child is dead. I would support your freedom to go dig up a family member in the cemetery dead for two weeks and place them on a ventilator at your own expense, but that does not mean that that person IS ANY LESS DEAD. Please understand the difference between the freedom to make a foolish choice rooted on science (again something which you never address) and agreement. I need neither the congrats nor the accolades of the wrong or foolish. Claiming victory in your case only increases the delusional quality of your logic.
I do not take a patient anywhere near to death. For your education, an anesthesiologist “renders a patient insensible and free from pain” during a surgical procedure. I am a Christian schooled in science and practice my art. Please understand the difference between spewing vitriol and inaccurate statements. If you wish to cast accusations as to my mindset, I welcome you to have surgery without one of my colleagues in attendance. Might I suggest you familiarize yourself with the statements of the American Board of Anesthesiologists and American Society of Anesthesiologists. In none of their statements is that we take a patient near death. However, when seconds count, physician anesthesiologists save lives.
“You have not addressed the macabre nor legal ramifications of continue to ventilate a dead person.”
That’s right. I never argued about that one way or the other.
“I would support your freedom to go dig up a family member in the cemetery dead for two weeks and place them on a ventilator at your own expense, but that does not mean that that person IS ANY LESS DEAD.”
I would not support anyone’s right to do that. But, oddly, your example here is exactly the point I have been making about brain dead vs dead.
A ventilator will do nothing to support function of non-brain tissues in a corpse.
Yet in the brain dead, a ventilator keeps these tissues functioning to such a level that they are able to be harvested, even three weeks after legal death, and used in transplants.
You don’t seem to be want to allow for the distinction. Whereas we can agree that they are both states of death, they are not the same physiologically.
I am sure you understand it, but don’t seem to want to be objective and clear about it because you seem to think it would be detrimental to your argument that it is a waste to continue support.
I do not necessarily disagree with the position that she is brain dead and should be removed from support.
But I cannot distort physiological reality nor do I think such obfuscation as you have attempted is necessary.
I feel people can understand that the brain is dead but the body is being kept alive by machines. There is no reason to say she is a corpse or a cadaver when that is not the case, except to sway emotion in those who may not be familiar with situations as these.
My comments and argument have been solely based on science regarding your insistence that she is a corpse.
On the other hand your argument for her being a corpse was not scientific but was legal.
Again, in no way is her condition physiologically equivalent to a 21 day old corpse.
You're a loony. You're as messed up as they are. Good day sir or madame. Get help.
Before Xmas this happened and I was in the Bay Area where Children’s is located. I saw a news report of this which had a picture of her.
My first comment here at FR on this was about her obesity and underlying health problems that must be associated with it. That post is here.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3104467/posts?page=31#31
You were a bit too obtuse to realize that my comment was that you can not know how the family fed her or exercised her etc... Not that you could not know she was obese.
In fact, the photo I initially saw on local news before Xmas was quite shocking. She was clearly obese and looked much older than 13. Photos shown more recently seem to be earlier photos that show her obesity but do not reflect what she looked like when she had this procedure that went wrong.
My initial comment to some degree was meant to say that there should not be an assumption that this horrible outcome was due to medical negligence.
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