I dont agree with the secrecy especially since they were given public donations. No one is going to hurt this child anymore than she could be because she is dead.
Im wondering how long it's going to take for the family to announce that they have 'let her go' because i think they have to be thinking 'derp' and hopefully realizing how badly they strung her passing along.
I ant get past them watching her slowly decompose and rot away.
Someone in another post asked if Jahi would want this for herself and this is where I say that it's a parents job to make that heart wrenching decision and make the call. Since they never expected this to happen, no one probably thought this would happen.
uhhh medically induced coma is induced BECAUSE the person isn't brain dead and subsequently is capable of physically suffering tremendously.
I hate everything
Much has been written about Jahi McMath in recent days. The 13-year-old Oakland, Calif., girl underwent surgery Dec. 9 to remove her tonsils. She was declared ?brain-dead? after going into cardiac arrest.
Since that time, experts have opined on the ethics of the brain-death declaration, the family?s decision to transfer her to another facility, and the involvement of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network in helping the family.
First, let me make it clear that our organization does not initiate contact with victims and their families or with the media. We did not contact the McMaths. We did not contact any media outlet.
We were contacted, and we responded. We respond because that is our mission ? to provide aid, comfort and support for vulnerable persons, and to speak truth to power. No one faces more risk in today?s health care system than our medically vulnerable.
Since my family established the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network in response to my sister?s death in 2005, we have been involved in hundreds of situations with families who find themselves in life-or-death situations.
In every case, we put our resources at the service of the family. We share medical, legal and other needed resources. We provide emotional solidarity in their darkest moments and, always, prayers of support.
Second, we are not medical professionals. We do not know if Jahi will improve. We have no way of knowing that. We know the tests medical professionals conduct in these catastrophic cases are scientific in nature and quite exacting. We also know this: Human beings are imperfect. We can and do make mistakes; this includes medical professionals. There have been extraordinary instances of this that are breathtaking to behold. Take Zack Dunlap, for example. He experienced a catastrophic brain injury and was declared brain-dead. The family was not convinced. Two months later, Zack Dunlap walked out of that hospital. There are other examples.
Is Jahi McMath capable of being neurologically rehabilitated? Regardless, we think there is an even more basic question that must be answered first: Who has primacy in a life-and-death matter like this ? the hospital or her parents?
Jahi?s life has been entrusted to her parents. They are her legal guardians. If they believe she is alive, they ought to have the right to have her transferred to another acute-care facility ? if they can find one that will take her.
They petitioned the courts for more time to assert their rights with the hospital. In the end, they prevailed, and the hospital agreed, and her parents had her transferred to another facility, where she is now a patient.
Whether Jahi will walk out of this facility the way Mr. Dunlap did is impossible to know. A more fundamental precedent has been established: A victim?s loved ones have a basic right to alternative diagnosis and, possibly, care ? if the originating hospital is unwilling to absorb additional expenses to sustain a life they think has ended.
This development will become increasingly significant in the days to come.
Finally, as a society, we are headed into uncharted territory. Demography and technology will increasingly force difficult and unwanted decisions on caregivers and loved ones.
The difficulty in making a pinpoint diagnosis in complex neurological matters, the soaring expense of life-sustaining medical technology, and the lucrative financial incentives to harvest the organs of a deceased Mr. Dunlap or Miss McMath will ultimately propel this issue into the forefront of public consciousness and discourse.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the current ?procurement? market for human tissues and organs in the United States is quite large and driven by insufficient supply and heavy demand. The Milliman Report publishes the ?going rate? for each of 12 different tissues and organs in the human body. A heart, for instance, goes for close to $80,000; a kidney, $65,000; a lung, $70,000.
If all 12 tissues and organs could be harvested from a single patient declared brain-dead, however unlikely, their total value would exceed a half-million dollars.
These revenues, of course, do not include the additional revenues generated from the transplant itself, pre- and post-transplant care, and the pharmaceuticals required after surgery.
To what degree any given hospital might be influenced by any and all of this, no one can say with certainty. What can be said with certainty is this: Obamacare will exert increasing pressure on health care institutions to justify the amount and quality of care for the most vulnerable patients.
Another factor: There is mass confusion about what constitutes extraordinary medical treatment and what is ordinary and obligatory medical treatment. In all 50 states, basic nutrition and hydration is now considered extraordinary medical treatment. My sister, Terri, did not die because her ventilator was removed. She died of dehydration and starvation close to 14 torturous days and nights after her feeding tube supplying her food and water was removed by court order.
Had my parents had the option the McMaths were given, Terri would be alive today and, under the right physiatrist and protocols, they could have improved her lifestyle, commonly mislabeled quality of life.
How much Terri could have improved, I cannot say. We will simply never know. But what we do know is a growing number of patients who have God-given value and dignity will find themselves in horrific circumstances in the coming years. Their loved ones will suffer in a way few of us could ever know.
Recently, I received phone calls from three different families. Each family said they were in the same position as the McMaths. Hospitals were telling them their loved one was brain-dead, and the hospital was no longer willing to care for them. Each family said they saw their loved one respond in some manner to their attempts to communicate with them.
What would you do?
Bobby Schindler is the executive director of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network. He is the brother of Terri Schiavo.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz2qgghxxQK
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Originally Posted by bowieluva
I hate these people
You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass
I am disgusted that they "suggested" that the motivating factor for declaring people brain dead was to harvest their organs and make money. If this were the case, I doubt there would be a waiting list for organs.
Comparing her to Zach Dunlap is apples to oranges. He was 'dead' several hours. She's been dead for days. I hate everything about this.
By this statement they are saying they have no medical knowledge, and that the tests medical professionals use are accurate. So they contradicted everything else they said in that articleSecond, we are not medical professionals. We do not know if Jahi will improve. We have no way of knowing that. We know the tests medical professionals conduct in these catastrophic cases are scientific in nature and quite exacting.
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
Well, you have all these inflammatory articles like the one on CNN today where a family swears they healed someone who was braindead with fish oil supplements.
Like, okay, let's see a video comparing how they were before to now.
To play devil's advocate for a moment- isnt it good that ultimately the decision be in the hands of the family? If not then who? OBviously at 13 this poor baby had no say or reason to question as adults but- I know there are people I trust that I would grant the power to determine my fate should i be unable to, and if they felt the doctor or hospital was not acting in my best interest, it would be good that they had final say.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the flip side of that right - a family who seems to be paranoid and not basing their decisions on fact. But overall, I think it is still good they have the right to decide no?
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.- D. Moynihan
I WILL STICK MY DICK IN YOUR HEAD
but, she is not alive and they can't decide that she is. i understand they're in serious denial, but at what point does this become abuse of a corpse? which i'm pretty sure is illegal.
Definitely, because the reverse of this is that tragic case in Texas where the hospital WON'T let that woman die with dignity despite her family's wishes.
I just think the sadness of this case is that people are using this family for political gain and exploiting their pain, plus fueling them with false hope.
Exactly. People have the right to make "bad" decisions. Or at least I think they should have that right.
Additionally, our knowledge is so imperfect. Once upon a time, we knew that people could be raised from the dead by gods or demons. Later, we knew that if your heart stopped, you were dead. Now we know that the heart can be restarted, or even replaced. We also know "brain death" and that there's no coming back from that. But will that knowledge still hold true in the future? And if we just automatically quit trying with the patient who is "dead" will we ever realize that the next big thing is right there in front of us?
I have no problem with people saying I don't want to live like that. But I also think we should be able to say "try everything, and make damn sure I'm not coming back before you pull the plug."
But medical science ( as puzz said) cannot prove that to a layman beyond any douibt. I am not arguing she is alive- but the family has the right to make the decision that they want to continue keeping her heart beating.
If anything, as bowie said - blame the people who are exploiting this family's belief system.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.- D. Moynihan
I WILL STICK MY DICK IN YOUR HEAD
Exactly.
I would imagine the first time someone tried CPR or shocking someone back, it seemed pretty abusive to onlookers too.
I understand why the mother will try anything and I respect her right to do so. I'm sure there's no hope for this child, but I would hate to see us tell family members that they can't try anything that seems reasonable to them...
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
Could you or someone, quote the relevant parts of the article. I've now read so many LA Times articles, they want me to pay up.
There's nothing interesting, puzz. Not from the lawyer anyway. He's just accused the whole internet of being bullies and he wants us to know that the McMath family isn't oblivious to the situation. They just need tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiime.
I don't know why this one just fascinates me, but ... it's like watching the neighbors fight. And now the creeps have pulled the drapes so we can't see what's going one.
YES. I need to know more about what her condition is like now. I'm morbid like that.
Jahi McMath family attorney: 'They are not fools. They know the odds'
By Jason Wells
January 21, 2014, 6:09 a.m.
The attorney for the family of Jahi McMath is defending their actions in a new op-ed that criticizes "self-righteous commenters" and praises the 13-year-old brain-dead girl's mother for her courage despite "incendiary, hateful public rhetoric."
The op-ed by San Francisco attorney Christopher Dolan, published in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, comes after medical ethicists and physicians have criticized the decision to keep Jahi on a ventilator despite her being declared brain dead on Dec. 12 -- a decision affirmed by at least three neurologists.
Medical experts have said the decision to allow the family to transfer the girl from Children's Hospital Oakland to an undisclosed facility has only perpetuated misconceptions of brain death that have dogged the Jahi case since her family went public.
Neurologists told an Alameda County Superior Court judge that 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.
The judge issued an order keeping Jahi on a ventilator until her body could first be transferred to the county coroner, and then to a private facility.
Dolan, though, has been widely criticized as having fed false hope to the McMath family that somehow their daughter -- who was issued a death certificate by the Alameda County coroner -- will recover.
In his op-ed, Dolan hit back, contending that those who have "attacked" Jahi's family do so arguing several "simplistic, uninformed points: The family is either stupid, misled by their lawyer or trying to exploit the system."
He noted that elsewhere in the U.S., such as New Jersey, there are personal religious exemptions for those who object to brain death, suggesting Jahi's case would not have been such a spectacle had it occurred there.
But experts point out that the money the McMath family received from supporters to transfer their daughter will eventually run out, and no amount of artificial help will stop Jahi's body from decomposing.
Bodies of the brain-dead have been maintained on respirators for months or, in rare cases, years. However, once cessation of all brain activity is confirmed, there is no recovery, said Rebecca S. Dresser, professor of law and ethics in medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, to The Times.
Even so, Dolan wrote that the McMath family "are not fools."
"They know the odds," he wrote. "They want time, free from the threats of the hospital to pull the plug."
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...#ixzz2r4vNovj5
Last edited by nestlequikie; 01-21-2014 at 02:51 PM. Reason: Removed extraneous links from article
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
Anyone know where she is at and if she is still "alive"?
The controversial debate over when life ends has taken center stage the past several weeks after 13-year-old Jahi McMath was declared brain dead three days after undergoing tonsil surgery at Children's Hospital Oakland. Both in court and in the media, a respected hospital whose doctors and nurses are dedicated to providing care for children on MediCal was pitted against a family searching for answers on how this could have happened and trying to save their daughter's life. As the hospital and the family battled in court over whether to remove the ventilator keeping Jahi breathing, talking heads battled in the media over the definition of life and death, with some claiming her family should let her rest in peace and accept her death while others claimed her family has a right to hold out for a miracle and keep her alive. Lost in the conversation is how a little-known California law is shaping how this tragedy unfolds.
We don't know all of the facts surrounding how Jahi suffered such a severe brain injury. What we do know is that she choked on her own blood and was without oxygen for at least 10 minutes. When the brain is deprived of oxygen, the difference of just a few additional minutes is critical, and the delay in getting a doctor to re-open her airway likely left the hospital wondering whether they would soon be facing a lawsuit for medical negligence.
In California, unlike in most other states, when a child dies due to medical negligence there is an artificial limit placed on the value of their life. That's because of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), a law passed in 1975 that places a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages. Due to this law, if Jahi remains on a ventilator, the hospital could face a multimillion-dollar verdict for economic damages, with a jury deciding what it would cost to continue to care for her medical needs and what the cost is of her lost wages due to her inability to work. However, if Jahi were to be taken off of the ventilator, the family may only recover $250,000 no matter how much a jury decides is a fair value to compensate them for the pain and suffering endured due to the loss of their child.
This law is unique to the medical profession in California. If a child were to die because of a reckless driver in a car accident or because of a pilot's error in a plane crash, it would be up to the jury to decide what they believe is fair to award the family due to their pain and suffering over the loss of a child. However, if a child dies due to an error made by a nurse or doctor, the jury's authority to decide how to compensate the family is taken away from them, without their knowledge. In these cases, a jury could return a substantial verdict only to find out afterward that the verdict will be reduced to $250,000, an amount set nearly 39 years ago. While social security benefits, wages, and the cost of goods and services has kept up with inflation, the cost of a child's life remains at an amount set back when Gerald Ford was president and Jerry Brown was governor for the first time.
Bob Pack knows all too well about this outdated law and how it impacts families whose children die as a result of medical negligence. In 2003 his 7-year-old daughter Alana and his 10-year-old son Troy were killed when a car jumped the curb where they had been riding their bikes and struck them both. The driver had been taking large quantities of prescription pills given to her by doctors from a local hospital. In the weeks before the accident, different doctors gave her 340 Vicodin, a narcotic painkiller, and 180 Flexeril, a muscle relaxant. Pack wanted to hold the doctors accountable for over-prescribing their patient in the hopes that it would prevent over-prescription in the future. However, because of the cap placed on the value of his children's lives, the cost of pursuing a case was not economically feasible.
"I spoke to numerous attorneys about MICRA and got the same answer, which was, 'Because of the cost to litigate a malpractice lawsuit, you will have no chance to recover anything.' So, in reality, my children's lives were worth zero," said Pack.
For the majority of medical malpractice cases, attorneys are not paid by the hour; instead, they invest their own time and money into pursuing the case and take a percentage of the recovery if they win. This contingency fee structure allows people who could not afford to hire an attorney pursue their case. Due to the current cost of litigating a medical malpractice case, it is oftentimes not economically feasible for attorneys to invest their money if the recovery is limited to a small percentage of $250,000. That's because it could cost $200,000 alone for the attorney to pursue the case, most of which is attributed to paying medical expert witnesses, doctors who charge for their time to review records and testify about their opinions. Many medical experts charge between $750 and $1,000 per hour for their time, and a single expert can easily charge $50,000 to review and testify in a case.
For Pack, the inability to hold the hospital accountable to try to stop the over-prescription of narcotics left him frustrated. "I wanted the hospital and doctors to improve their prescribing protocols of narcotics, but because I never got them to court, they have never changed their behavior to this day." So he is sponsoring a ballot measure called the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act, which would adjust the cap to meet inflation, raising it from $250,000 to $1 million, along with requiring doctors to submit to random drug and alcohol tests and creating a statewide database to track how many prescription pills a patient has obtained.
"The importance of raising the cap on MICRA to adjust it for inflation is about allowing victims and their families to achieve a sense of justice and accountability," said Pack.
Adjusting or removing the cap would also get rid of the potential conflict of interest hospitals face in caring for their patients. If a patient goes without oxygen to the brain for several minutes but remains on life support, the hospital could face a multimillion-dollar verdict if a jury determines the injury was due to a medical error. However, if a patient is taken off life support, the hospital currently would face a financial liability of, at most, $250,000.
A basic requirement for any doctor-patient or hospital-patient relationship is trust. For a family to give consent to a doctor for them to perform a surgery on their child, the family must put their trust in those doctors and nurses who care for their child. To the family that is asked to agree with the hospital's recommendation to end life support for that child, the appearance of a possible financial motive by the hospital is enough to break that trust and destroy any chance for a meaningful dialogue with the hospital.
We will never know whether financial motivations played a role in Children's Hospital's decision to encourage the McMath family to take Jahi off the ventilator despite their objections. However, due to the substantial difference in financial liability a hospital faces if a patient lives or dies, there is a concern that hospitals could have a financial incentive in turning off life support, a concern that would be erased if the value of a patient's life were not dependent upon an outdated law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mari-f...b_4645768.html
This article is so misleading. So I supposed the Hospital hired these outside Neuros to declare her braindead so they would only have to pay 250K? Ridiculous.
On another note, the cap DOES have to be raised.
You can take those Fleets and shove them up your ass
Agreed this article is bullshit. First of all, it was not one doctor that prescribed all of that Vicodin and Flexeril. That bitch went doctor shopping.
The family shot any chances they had of a malpractice suit out the window when they decided to keep her on the ventilator instead of letting her go and allowing an ME to do an autopsy.
"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man" -Charles Darwin
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