The window of opportunity was left open and ignorance flooded in. Belief that she could recover defied medical reason. Even despite multiple physicians attesting to her brain death, her family clings to the hope that she will come back to them. No one with brain death has ever done so. Lawyers took the place of doctors. Decision-making by those with the expertise, the experience, the understanding of medicine was undermined by legal wrangling. Religious figures, dubious ethicists, and a parade of attention-seekers marched into view.
The death of Jahi McMath is extraordinarily sad. Such a complication occurs rarely, thankfully, but when it does it shatters a family's world. It is not uncaring, unfeeling, or unbelieving for her medical providers to assert the fact that she died. When so determined, their role was to promptly turn off the unnecessary machines. A moment of loss has been prolonged into an enduring tragedy. It was the responsibility of her doctors to put an end to it. By deferring the termination of her life support, her death can be denied and the law can struggle with making decisions that should never have been offered to it. Her doctors failed her, in that moment of greatest need, and we fail her still the longer we perpetuate her inevitable end.
Originally Posted by *crickets*
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