Expert: Videos Show Jahi McMath Is Alive, Getting Better

New finding by UCLA expert is sure to stoke the debate over how to decide if someone’s really “dead” or not

Three years after being declared brain dead following an ill-fated throat surgery at Children’s Hospital in Oakland and subsequently kept on life support, Jahi McMath continues to occupy a central role in the legal and philosophical debate over when a family should remove a loved one from life support.

In the latest twist to the drama, a well-known neurologist has reviewed videos of McMath and says they prove she’s still alive after all, even if her brain is not functioning as it should. McMath’s family quietly moved her from the Oakland hospital in 2014, insisting that the diagnosis of being brain dead did not necessarily mean the girl was actually deceased, and she’s remained connected to a ventilator in an undisclosed location in New Jersey ever since.

As the girl’s family continues its legal battle to have her declaration of death overturned as they proceed with a lawsuit, the new finding by Dr. Alan Shewmon, a professor emeritus of pediatrics and neurology at UCLA, could help bolster the McMath family’s case. Shewmon, who is a longtime critic of the standards used to determine when someone is brain dead, reached his decision after studying 49 videos of the girl recorded by her relatives from March 2014 to April 2016. In a court document filed June 29 in Alameda County Superior Court, Shewmon declares that the videos show McMath is actually alive and that her condition is even improving with time.

“The video recordings, as crude and unsystematic as they are,” he wrote, “represent the only way at present to decide whether Jahi is permanently comatose or in a minimally conscious state with intermittent responsiveness.”

http://www.docbastard.net/2017/04/jahi-mcmath-update.html

Comment:
I don’t think there is anything that will stop Mrs. Winkfield from trying to get Jahi’s death certificate overturned. If she can do that, she can move the body back to California and get Medical benefits there for care. Then if the family can win a malpractice lawsuit, they can get millions in compensation. With a DC, the limit is $250,000. Chump change, according to the uncle. There is video released by nailah that supposedly demonstrates Jahi coloring. There is a marker placed between her thumb and forefinger, with the tip of the marker on a piece of paper that has squiggles of different colors on it. I watched the video maybe three times, because I thought I missed it the first time. Nope. No movement whatsoever, yet everyone one the Jahi Facebook pages got all excited that this was somehow demonstrative of her healing. It’s just so damn sad that people believe a brain dead person can heal. There is going to have to be some actual medical evidence to get a death certificate overturned, and that’s just not going to happen. I can’t help but wonder if the videos are supposed to get public opinion swayed in favor of the family, but I don’t know what purpose that will serve.

So, on the basis of videos, and not a single physical exam or functional imaging of any sort, this guy declares that Jahi is still alive.

Yeah, right.

I wonder if the GoFundMe donations have been drying up.

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