I am not a medical professional and I have no idea whether Jahi is truly brain dead or if her brain is just extremely injured but has some extremely minimal function. I do remember though that there were posters with a medical background in this very thread talking about how a person who is truly brain dead will decompose even with intensive medical interventions. I remember people talking about her intestines "sloughing" and things like that and that her body would give out soon. I know that people in a persistent vegetative state, as opposed to being brain dead, can last a long time on life support but can someone who is truly, 100% brain dead with no brain function be kept from decomposition for so long?
My personal opinion is that Jahi's family should have let her go by now but I am sincerely curious about my above question. I also think Jahi McMath's case may be challenging what science thinks it knows about brain death.
Exactly! I wonder as well.
If you go back and quote them directly, they will get a notification and perhaps try to answer you.
I am not one of those posters as I have no knowledge of, or experience with it, however, if you read the New Yorker article, two medical experts in neurology also say that the brain will liquefy without blood supply (and I believe other sources were quoted at the beginning of this thread), and in fact, Jahi's brain stem on a subsequent scan was indistiguishable. What perhaps had changed is that some ares of her cerebrum appeared to have a small amount of blood supply. (And this was not studied thoroughly; it was the opinion of a small group who may be biased.)
There were numerous references to what was originally observed on Jahi's testing, i.e. how her brain death was actually determined. Her brain scans showed a "white out", when it should've been dark, meaning no blood supply. Many other tests were performed by different medical experts, and results were overseen by a judge. So at that time, she was declared, without a doubt, brain dead.
Most people aren't going to go through the extreme motions of sustaining a legally dead body to find out years down the road that there may be a tiny bit of blood supply that recovered in the brain. Even if it is there, it doesn't change a lot. Jahi still has just about zero quality of life, as does the rest of her family. Even the hospital in NJ that took on her case discharged her with a diagnosis of "Brain Death" and said they feel she has no hope of recovery.
This is an intriguing medical/legal/ethical case that no doubt will be studied for years to come. We still don't have a final outcome, nor has the malpractice case yet come up. The family would like to go home to CA, but CA says No. Their stance hasn't changed.
The question that I have is why the hospital in NJ consented to putting a tracheostomy and feeding tube in when just about nobody else would touch the case, being that Jahi was declared legally dead? (And I understand the laws in NJ and NY.) Without the feeding tube, this probably would've ended long ago.
