OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — With a
family fighting a hospital to keep their daughter who has been declared
brain dead on life support, a California judge on Monday ordered the
hospital to keep treating 13-year-old Jahi McMath for another week as a
second medical evaluation is conducted.
Jahi experienced complications following a tonsillectomy at Children's Hospital in Oakland.
As
her family sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom, an
Alameda County judge called for Jahi to be independently examined by
Paul Graham Fisher, the chief of child neurology at Stanford University
School of Medicine.
The judge also ordered the hospital to keep Jahi on a ventilator until Dec. 30, or until further order from the court.
The examination was expected to occur later on Monday, and early Tuesday.
Hospital
staff and Fisher will conduct an electroencephalogram, or EEG, and
tests to see if blood is still flowing to Jahi's brain.
Doctors at Children's Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support.
Jahi's family wants to keep her hooked up to a respirator and eventually have her moved to another facility.
The
family said they believe she is still alive and that the hospital
should not remove her from the ventilator without their permission.
"It's
wrong for someone who made mistakes on your child to just call the
coroner ... and not respect the family's feeling or rights," Sandra
Chatman, Jahi's grandmother who is a registered nurse, said in the
hallway outside the courtroom.
"I know Jahi suffered, and it tears me up."
The family's attorney also
asked Judge Evelio Grillo to allow a third evaluation by Paul Byrne, a
pediatric professor at the University of Toledo. The hospital's attorney
objected to Byrne, saying he is not a pediatric neurologist.
The judge is expected to take up the request to use Byrne, and another hearing was scheduled for Tuesday morning.
Byrne
is the co-editor of the 2001 book "Beyond Brain Death," which presents a
variety of arguments against using brain-based criteria for declaring a
person dead.
In a phone
interview, Byrne said he could not comment in detail because he had not
seen any of Jahi's medical records. But the fact that her ventilator is
still functioning properly is a sign that she is alive, he said.
"The
ventilator won't work on a corpse," he added. "In a corpse, the
ventilator pushes the air in, but it won't come out. Just the living
person pushes the air out."
Jahi's
family says the girl bled profusely after a tonsillectomy and then went
into cardiac arrest before being declared brain dead.
Outside the
courtroom, Dr. David Durand, chief of pediatrics at Children's, said
that staff have the "deepest sympathy" for the family, but that Jahi is
brain dead.
"The ventilator
cannot reverse the brain death that has occurred and it would be wrong
to give false hope that Jahi will ever come back to life," he said.
Durand said Jahi's surgery was "very complex," not simply a tonsillectomy.
"It was much more complicated than a tonsillectomy," Durand said. He refused to elaborate, citing health care privacy laws.
Arthur
L. Caplan, who leads the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone
Medical Center and is not involved in Jahi's case, told The Associated
Press that once brain death has been declared, a hospital is under no
obligation to keep a patient on a ventilator.
"Brain
death is death," he said, adding, "They don't need permission from the
family to take her off, but because the little girl died unexpectedly
and so tragically, they're trying to soften the blow and let the family
adjust to the reality."
Often families confuse brain death with a coma or a permanent vegetative state, Caplan said, offering an analogy.
"A
coma is like a television that has a picture with a lot of
interference," he said. "There's brain activity, but something's not
right. A permanent vegetative state is when the screen is all snow.
Brain death is when the set is unplugged. There is nothing on the
screen."
Keeping Jahi on a ventilator is also likely to cost
thousands of dollars a day, he continued, and because she has been
declared brain dead, is unlikely to be covered by health insurance.
Earlier
Monday, Christopher Dolan, the family's attorney, vowed to keep Jahi
hooked to the ventilator through Christmas. He said he would file an
appeal if the judge orders her removed from the machine on Tuesday.
"I
am confident she'll live through Christmas," a visibly weary Dolan said
after the hearing. Dolan said he is working the case for free after the
family reached out for help a week earlier.
Given
the very public battle over Jahi's treatment, the judge pleaded with
attorneys on both sides to continue speaking with each other and the
family to help prepare for his eventual final order.
"This is a very, very charged case. The stakes are very high because there's a young girl involved," Grillo said.
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