Nestled among pillows with her black hair draped over a colorful blanket, 15-year-old Jahi McMath appeared to be peacefully asleep. The caption accompanying her photo supported this notion, describing “Jahi as healthy and beautiful as ever, proving the naysayers wrong.”
There was no mention, on the Facebook post that has been shared 2,521 times since last week, of McMath’s death certificate: a document signed by a California coroner in 2013, declaring her deceased after a routine tonsil removal surgery produced fatal complications.
In legal terms, McMath is no longer alive, because she is brain-dead. Her neurological processes have ceased, and unlike comatose patients in vegetative states, there is no hope for recovery from brain death.
The brain-dead will never open their eyes, nor speak, nor walk again.
And yet – with modern technology, it is possible for their organs to continue functioning, and for parts of their body (like hair, for instance) to keep growing. On life support, they maintain a heartbeat.
In the eyes of the law, McMath is dead. But many religions define life as breathing lungs and a beating heart, things that McMath has when connected to a respirator and a feeding tube.
With this in mind, McMath’s family has fought to have her death certificate overturned. After Children’s Hospital Oakland refused to keep McMath on life support, the family moved to New Jersey, where a state law allows for exemptions from neurological death declarations on religious grounds. All the while, they have harbored hope that their daughter – brain-dead for two years, “alive” for 15 – will one day miraculously awaken.
“Plaintiffs are Christians with firm religious beliefs that as long as the heart is beating, Jahi is alive,” read the family’s original lawsuit against the hospital to keep treating their daughter. “These religious beliefs involve providing all treatment, care and nutrition to a body that is living, treating it with respect and seeking to encourage its healing.”
The family and Children’s Hospital Oakland ultimately reached a settlement whereby McMath was released to her mother, Latasha Nailah Winkfield, with her ventilator and intravenous fluid lines intact.
McMath’s family filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and McMath’s surgeon, Frederick Rosen, last March. The complaint alleges that Rosen failed to note an “anatomical anomaly” in McMath that put her at serious risk of the excessive bleeding that led to her brain death.
This suit’s success also hinges on whether McMath is considered alive or dead by the Alameda Superior Court. California’s malpractice law has $250,000 cap on monetary compensation in cases where a patient died from surgery and as a result does not require funds for continued care.
But if McMath is regarded as alive, and thus needing financial assistance to stay on life support, the award might be much greater if her family prevails.
McMath’s condition has attracted fervent supporters and detractors alike, with her family’s persistence at the center of raging debates about what it means to be living versus dead.
The discussion has been reignited after the Facebook post showing Winkfield sitting at her daughter’s bedside went viral on a group called “Keep Jahi Mcmath on life support.”
“Jahi Will Rise,” wrote user Eno Inyang, who posted the photo. “A recent picture of beautiful Jahi, doing very well, hair, skin and all very healthy, growing into a beautiful young lady in front of her mother’s eyes.”
The post has since been taken down. On Monday, the page administrator wrote the following: “if you are here to spew your negative thoughts please kindly delete your comments and remove yourself.”
While some supported the family’s assertion that McMath is still alive, others gently (and not so gently) implored them to let go.
“Looking beautiful as ever baby girl hang in there you have a huge comeback awaiting,” one commenter wrote. “God has blessed you and he will continue to bless you and nurse you all way back to health amen.”
Another person countered: “I’m sorry it’s modern medicine and modern technology. If God is so powerful and keeping her alive take her off the man made machines and let’s [see] what your God does. I fully understand your fate but it’s time to face reality.”
Many commenters shared stories of loved ones or acquaintances who had been on life support and deemed irrecoverable by doctors, only to be regain some or all of their neurological functioning. This is possible for patients in comas, but not for the brain-dead, unless the diagnosis was incorrect to begin with.
The determination of McMath’s family, however, has little waned.
“She’s still asleep,” Winkfield told NBC Bay Area in 2014. “I don’t use the word ‘brain-dead’ for my daughter. I’m just waiting and faithful that she will have a recovery. She is blossoming into a teenager before my eyes.”
She reiterated this sentiment at a press conference in December, appearing before reporters via Skype with a “Jahi’s Life Matters” button pinned to her chest.
“Jahi is healthy from the neck-down,” Winkfield said, the San Jose Mercury News reported. “She just has a brain injury, and I understand those things do take time to heal.”
Sandra Chatman, McMath’s grandmother, told the Mercury News that McMath responds to requests to “give a thumbs-up,” and reacts to music by wiggling her fingers. The family has not released any videos demonstrating these responses, though spontaneous movements have commonly been observed in brain-dead patients.
These small stirrings occur without any brain activity, but they continue to bolster the family’s hopes amid heavy criticism.
“I will not give up on Jahi, period,” McMath’s father, Milton McMath, told the Mercury News. “I will pull a trigger on myself before I pull the plug on her.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Yanan Wang
{Matzav.com}
Jahi is still alive, as no flesh will last without a soul for 3 days and not begin to rot. From Sanhedrin 91 b:
Antoninus also said to Rabbi [Yehuda ha Nasi]: ‘When is the soul placed in man; as soon as [conception] is decreed or when [the embryo] is actually formed?’
Rabbi replied, ‘From the moment of formation.’ (which is at 40 days)
Antoninus objected: ‘Can a piece of meat be unsalted for three days without becoming putrid? But it must be from the moment that [G-d] decrees [its destiny at conception].’
Rabbi said: This thing Antoninus taught me, and Scripture supports him, for it is written, And thy decree hath preserved my spirit [i.e., my soul].
I am not sure it is unsalted (as it gets physiological solution, and countless other inputs)
It is, however, unusual that a cerebral death patient is stable for so long. A couple of weeks is ordinary, a couple of months probably to be expected (since the laws on brain death were approved in many countries, few people are kept on long-term life support after being declared brain dead, and medicine progressed quite a lot since the 80s), two years is a long time. It could be a wrong diagnosis (I am sorry but I would hardly be surprised) or it could be that this facility is very skilled and dedicated, doing state-of-the-art medical assistance and perhaps beyond it. We all should welcome scientific progress, as it can improve, for example, the chances of not-yet-viable foetuses carried by brain-dead ladies. The halacha I am unqualified to comment.