I think the schools I'm pointing out are not necessarily Catholic schools. They're "creationist ". I think it's a relatively new trend. It's disturbing though. I've always known Catholics to live in harmony with science. I guess the situation with Jahi's school made me think of creationist. Why would they put kids in the position to have to choose?
Originally Posted by Nic B
You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass
The cases of two young women ? a California teen and a pregnant Texas mother, both on ventilators after devastating injuries ? have shone a spotlight on difficult end-of-life issues, which can be especially painful when tragedy leads a previously healthy person to be declared brain dead.
In both cases, families disagree with the way that hospitals have treated their loved ones. The teen's family wants her kept on the ventilator; the Texas mom's husband wants his wife's ventilator removed.
The stories of Jahi McMath, 13, and Marlise Munoz, 33, are complicated not just by grief, but by the public's lack of understanding of the medical possibilities for people with little to no brain activity, says Arthur Caplan, head of the division of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.
The California child, McMath, was pronounced brain-dead by the coroner's office, after suffering rare complications from a Dec. 9 tonsillectomy. Unlike patients in a vegetative state, who have some brain activity, people declared brain-dead are no longer alive, says Laurence McCullough, a professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The term "brain death" simply refers to the method of determining death, he says.
By moving the lungs up and down, a ventilator can "give the appearance of life," Caplan says. That also can stimulate a heart beat. Once the machines are disconnected, however, breathing and circulation stop.
Jahi's parents, unwilling to disconnect her from machines that keep her heart beating artificially, have transferred their daughter from Children's Hospital Oakland to an unnamed facility, where she has had one tube inserted in her throat and another into her stomach to pump in nutrition.
The family's attorney, Christopher Dolan, says Children's Hospital made it more difficult for Jahi's family's to process her loss.
"If the facility had been more compassionate and less aggressive and had realized that you don't do this to somebody at Christmas, maybe the family would have had more time to process this," Dolan says. "This is the same hospital that they think made an error with their child, who was then rushing them out the door. They thought the hospital had let them down. ... They just need some time."
MORE: Understanding brain death vs. states of consciousness
The family, who are Christian, is still hoping for a miracle, Dolan says. He acknowledged that he has been criticized for giving the family false hope.
"Is that unethical? Then is church unethical?" Dolan asked in an interview. "A huge part of our nation on the 25th of December was praying to a baby who was born as a miracle, who healed people as a miracle and who died and was resurrected as a miracle."
Jahi's condition is very different from that of Terri Schiavo, who died in 2005 after years in a permanent vegetative state, McCullough says. Although Schiavo had limited brain functioning, she was alive.
Decisions about Schiavo's health care were far less clear-cut than those involving Jahi, Caplan says. Only Schiavo's brain stem ? the lower part of the brain that controls basic functions such as breathing and swallowing ? was active. She did not need a ventilator, because she could breathe on her own. But she could not think, feel, sense or be aware, Caplan says.
Because Schiavo's family disagreed about what her wishes would have been, they fought a lengthy court battle over whether to remove her feeding tube. Her husband eventually prevailed. The feeding tube was removed, and she died two weeks later.
In Texas, Munoz suffered an apparent blood clot in her lungs in November, when she was 14 weeks pregnant. Although her husband describes her as brain-dead, the hospital refuses to remove her from a ventilator. In media reports, Erick Munoz has said that his wife didn't wish to be kept alive artificially and would have wanted to be taken off a ventilator.
John Peter Smith Hospital has characterized the woman's condition differently, saying Munoz is in "serious condition in the intensive care unit."
Since only living people can be described as seriously ill, the hospital's description implies that Munoz is alive, not brain-dead, McCullough says. Hospital officials have said that they are following Texas law, which states that a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient.
If Munoz is alive but unconscious, McCullough says the hospital shouldn't be blamed for taking the legally cautious approach of keeping her on life support.
According to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, adopted by most states, death is defined as "irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions" or "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem."
There are no ethical issues in the care of someone who has been declared brain-dead, because the patient is now a corpse, McCullough says. In Jahi's case, "orders should have been immediately written to discontinue all life support," says McCullough, who has no personal knowledge of Jahi's case. "The family should have been allowed to spend some time with the body if they wished. And then her body should have been sent to the morgue. That is straightforward. There is no ethical debate about that."
Both Caplan and McCullough were critical of the unnamed medical facility that agreed to put Jahi's body on a ventilator. "What could they be thinking?" McCullough says. "Their thinking must be disordered, from a medical point of view. ... There is a word for this: crazy."
Caplan agrees: "You can't really feed a corpse."
McCullough says he worries about the emotional, spiritual and financial damage that the parents will suffer. "Insurance doesn't pay for dead people," he says. He also worries about the psychological effect of seeing the girl's body, which is already said to be deteriorating, continue to break down. "Are there some living cells in the body? Not all the cells die at once. It takes time. But her body will start to break down and decay. It's a matter of when, not whether."
Jahi's new doctors are "trying to ventilate and otherwise treat a corpse," Caplan said. "She is going to start to decompose."
Dolan says that Jahi's family understands that her body could deteriorate. "They're not blind to these realities," Dolan says. "The mom has said that if her daughter is decaying, if she is suffering, that she will pull the vent."
The case of Munoz, the Texas mother, is very different if she is, as her husband claims, brain-dead.
In that case, "you have a pregnancy in a cadaver," McCullough says. "Then the law no longer applies." If Munoz is dead, and the hospital wishes to continue ventilation to save her fetus, that is considered a medical experiment, and should undergo careful consideration by a committee of experts, McCullough says.
"In desperate cases, you respond with very careful thought and deliberation," says McCullough, who chairs the fetal therapy board at Texas Children's Hospital.
Given that Munoz suffered a loss of oxygen to her brain because of the clot, the fetus may also have suffered grievous harm, as well, Caplan says. "You probably have a fetus who is terribly devastated," Caplan says. "I do think the family's wishes should be honored."
At this point, Munoz's fetus is not viable, says McCullough, noting that infants are generally not considered viable ? or able to survive with full medical support ? until the 24th week of a 40-week pregnancy. Caplan says the Texas legislature needs to rewrite its law, which he describes as overly broad. As it's written, Caplan says, the law says "you can't have a living will if you are pregnant, even one day pregnant."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...ients/4394173/
Quoting myself to answer your question...
I am very confused by the family's claim that she is receiving nutrition. The Dr. who took care of her at OCH said in a written statement that she has had no bowel sounds since the arrest. No bowel sounds = they ain't working, and if you put anything in there it will back up and eventually the bowel will perforate, which is A BAD THING.
Last edited by *crickets*; 01-10-2014 at 06:40 PM.
Hmmmmmmm..... perhaps it's not all fiction? Lol
You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass
This tweet from a reporter who is supposedly in contact w/the family. (He was one of the ones they talked to before they went 'underground.') No word from the lolyer or updates from the family to the faithful on the FB pages. Nada. You would think they'd toss a crumb or two to the FB followers at least.Nick Smith @nicksmithnews: #New: "#Jahi continues to be treated medically and is doing well. We're staying out of media unless there is a huge update." Says family.
1/13/13 3:05 PM
At this point I flat-out don't believe she has a trache or PEG tube. These procedures would have required an OR, either in a hospital or ambulatory surgery center, and I don't see how any such facility would allow it.
So where is she now? I think it's odd the family is so silent after pitching such a huge fit before
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/..._is_alive.html
Long, interesting article about brain death...
i'm confused by this, too. i don't know all that much about physiology and microbiology, as i've just taken a few classes, but it seems to me that if the cells are dying off that infection and accelerated cell death have got to be imminent.
I think they're lying, about the tubes and the nutrition and the "doing very well," as a big FU to David Durand and Children's Hospital. The whole thing turned into a personal grudge match between Durand and Singer the PR guy on one side and Dolan and uncle Omari on the other. A sick and perverse game with this poor brain-dead 13-year-old body and her grieving mom stuck in the middle.
If she's not dead "in the biblical sense" already I think she's very close to it.
Ugh this is so gross and sad.
Gross and sad indeed.
Every time I see an update to this thread I hope to come here and find out that she is dead-dead... then I feel REALLY bad for hoping such a thing on a child... then I remember she is already dead and what a clusteruck this whole situation is! =(
Anyway, since the different tubes are not in probably not in place, because WHO in their rightful mind would operate on a dead body, will that change the pace at which her body deteriorates? By a drastic amount? Would the feeding tube have helped her?
Sorry if that's a dumb question with a really obvious answer... I'm just curious.
Just watch, this whole thing is going to get so played out that we are going to see more and more of this stuff.
My husband already knew my wishes but this made us talk more about it. We even talked about the boys and God forbid we are ever in this situation we would do right by our son's and let them go peacefully with us by their side.
God forbid anyone of us ever have to deal with this.
This.
If you're wondering why I seem to have contempt for the Family and especially the Attorney? It's this. How many people who had a shot at life will now die because the families are going to question brain death and not donate organs? We just stepped back to the stone ages of medicine.
You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass
Hubby and I are updating our Advanced Directives, Medical POAs, Donor Cards, etc. because of all this media attention. We want our wishes to be abundantly clear.
I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to. - Donnie Darko
I can't help but think would Jahi want this? I already believe her soul has parted from her body (I know people may say I'm crazy to believe in the afterlife) so it's just a shell of her former self that remains. If they think she's "alive" (which she's not) do they honestly think she would want to live like she has been?
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
Doing well, huh? As compared to what?
I keep hoping this poor child has passed on...so sad.
i think it's really rude of these parents to get us all so invested in their story and then 'pull the plug' on the media. enquiring minds want to know.
At least they could do it to something, I say it shows hope!i think it's really rude of these parents to get us all so invested in their story and then 'pull the plug' on the media. enquiring minds want to know.
As the Jahi McMath case has unfolded, I have watched how her parents have not been able to give up on her, feeling a mixture of empathy and frustration. I have empathized with the pain that they must feeling as they grieve over the tragic, senseless loss of their beautiful daughter; but I have also felt frustration with the medical professionals who seemingly have allowed them to continue in the fantasy that she will somehow undergo a miraculous recovery. Why is no one taking them aside and telling them bluntly that they must give up? Surely it would be kinder than allowing them to have false hope? These have been my feelings until this morning. Then, something changed that allowed me to see the case through their eyes: I learned about the case of Steven Thorpe.
Steven Thorpe was a seventeen-year-old boy who suffered from horrific trauma in a car crash. After the accident, he was placed in a medically-induce coma. However, his doctors told the young man?s family that he would never recover because he had no brain activity and was considered to be brain dead, just like Jahi McMath. His doctors suggested that the family should put some thought towards donating his organs and then turning off the life-support machine that was keeping his body alive.
But Steven?s parents weren?t convinced. His father believed that he was still there and he wanted to get a second opinion. He asked a private GP named Julia Piper to do one more check on his son, who was a patient at University Hospital in Coventry, West Midlands, in England. Because of his father?s persistence, the hospital allowed a neurologist to check him one more time and the result was miraculous. The doctor was able to detect faint brain waves that had not been detected before. Steven had a chance at recovery, no matter how slim it might have been, so the decision was made to attempt to bring him out of his coma.
Just five short weeks later, he was discharged from the hospital having made a nearly-complete recovery.
So, does this mean that Jahi McMath will recover? No. Her body has deteriorated significantly since the 13-year-old was declared brain dead on December 12. Because of the controversy surrounding her case she has no doubt been checked for any signs of brain activity multiple times. It is certain that it only a matter of time before even the extreme measures that are currently being used to give her lifeless body the appearance of living will not be able to overcome the derangement that exists in a body with no brain activity available to regulate it.
However, even though she is well and truly dead at this point, this doesn?t mean that Jahi?s parents were wrong to try to exhaust every possible means of giving her a chance. Why? Because the case of Steven Thorpe illustrates a couple of very important points. One is the fact that doctors are not gods. Mistakes in judgement are made. It was only right to make very certain that a correct diagnosis was made. A little girl?s life was hanging in the balance. And, two, no one is going to advocate for a patient more strongly than the people who know and love them well. That should not be ignored or dismissed because sometimes those intuitions are correct, like they were in the case of Steven.
No, I would argue that the parents of Jahi McMath did exactly the right thing in not giving up. It may have been a futile effort, but it was not the wrong choice. We should never become so cynical that we cannot hold out hope for a miracle.
http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/jahi-m...o-not-give-up/
Nevermind the media, they pulled the plug on all the gullible souls they begged for money and prayers from. They got what they wanted and kicked their faithful followers to the curb. Sayonara, suckers!
sorry, not brain dead... try again. (not you, puzz, bloggers!)
bad diagnosis once again. you can't diagnose brain death if a person is in a medically induced coma (from what i've learned recently).
OK I thought I saw that somewhere. Glad you confirmed it ANI.
I'm all for erring on the side of hope. I think we occasionally are way too quick to pull the plug... But ffs dead is dead. Jahi isn't suffering, but it's time to say good bye.
yeah, they can't be under any kind of medication and i'm assuming to be in a medically induced coma, you would have to be constantly pumped with drugs. it's not like they hit you over the head with a stick to knock you out.
perhaps they should try reverse psychology or something. if they tell the parents that she is in horrible agony, maybe they might consider doing the right thing!
here's an article on medically induced comas. they use drugs pretty much shut down the brain so that it's using as little energy as possibly to sustain life and can focus on healing.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...y-induced-coma
so, thorpe's doctors gave him drugs to surpress brain activity and then declared him brain dead? glad they weren't my doctors!What Is a Medically Induced Coma and Why Is It Used?
Medically induced comas are only used when other options are lacking
By David Biello
In the case of traumatic brain injury—such as the bullet wound sustained by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Saturday's assault outside a Tucson supermarket that killed six people and wounded 13 others—doctors sometimes induce a coma. This effective shutdown of brain function naturally occurs only in cases of extreme trauma, so why would doctors seek to mimic it in patients, as they have with the congresswoman, already suffering from head wounds and other issues?
The answer lies in the science behind general anesthesia, which some 60,000 patients undergo every day. A review paper in the December 30, 2010, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine reveals that such anesthesia is, essentially, a reversible coma.
That is exactly what doctors are aiming for in the case of a true medically induced coma, often using the same drugs or extreme hypothermia induced by exposure to a cold environment to halt blood flow entirely and permit surgery on the aorta. Shutting down function can give the brain time to heal without the body performing radical triage by shutting off blood flow to damaged sections. To find out more about such medically induced comas and the reasons why doctors employ them, Scientific American spoke with anesthesiologist Emery Brown of Harvard Medical School, co-author of the NEJM review.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What is a medically induced coma?
So basically what happens with a medically induced coma is that you take a drug and administer it until you see a certain pattern in the monitor that follows the patient's brain waves, the EEG [electroencephalogram]. Patients with brain injuries who are in a coma have a similar pattern. If that pattern is there, then you feel comfortable that the patient is in a drug-induced coma. You are doing it so that you can hopefully protect the brain.
What are you protecting the brain from?
If you've had a brain injury, what happens is the metabolism of the brain has been significantly altered. You may have areas without adequate blood flow. The idea is: "Let me reduce the amount of energy those different brain areas need." If I can do that then, as the brain heals and the swelling goes down, maybe those areas that were at risk can be protected.
But the main thing about a drug-induced coma, as opposed to a coma, is that it's reversible. If you do this to someone with a normal brain, they would come right out of it once you removed the drugs.
But it's used in the case of people with brain injuries. So what are the risks?
Speaking generally, the main effects that these drugs have outside the brain is they reduce blood pressure. So people trying to do this are giving a lot of other medicines to keep blood pressure up and keep the heart pumping in a nice way. You're protecting the brain on one hand and, on the other hand, all areas of the brain are not getting the blood they need necessarily.
If you do this for an extended period of time, the drugs can accumulate and it may take them a while to wash out of the system as well. As long as you're mindful of these things you can see someone through a period like this.
How long is that period?
It really depends on the injury, whether it's a brain injury or seizing. One patient was kept in [a drug-induced coma] for six months. Obviously, that's the tail end of the distribution.
It depends on how the person is progressing and the nature of the injury. What the neurologists or [intensive care unit] doctors do is try to have them come out as soon as possible. In a case like Gifford's they have swelling. If they see the swelling recede, then they may try to lighten up the coma to see if she can come back and see what her level of function is.
How safe are drug-induced comas?
A drug like propofol, we use this every day in the operating room. It is probably the most used drug in all of anesthesia. Every day essentially, when patients go under general anesthesia that whole state is a reversible coma. It's a difference in dosage.
How does a medically-induced coma differ from a natural coma?
The body doesn't usually decide to enter a coma. A coma is a profound shutdown of brain function. It typically results from profound trauma, brain injury, a drug overdose, stroke—some very gross insult. There isn't a natural analogue for [a medically induced coma].
Are there after effects?
It's hard to sort out, because if you're going to these extremes you're already dealing with a very dire situation. If there are effects later on, it's an extremely difficult distinction to make whether it is an effect of the drug-induced coma. People who do this are very mindful of watching and monitoring. They make every effort to only use this option for as long as they need to.
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