[SJackson]

Seems like we've been here before. In anticipation of the question, there appear to be no financial considerations.

[SJackson]

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[MAD-AS-HELL]

Sorry, but the family is trying to have it both ways. If they don’t believe the child is dead, then take him off life support and take him home. By keeping him on life support they are contradicting their own beliefs because they know full well it’s the life support that is keeping him alive.

[Westlander]

Glioblastoma? Astrocytoma? Sad.

[Alberta's Child]

These are always difficult cases to judge, especially when financial considerations would tend to make a lot of this moot. What makes them so difficult is that they involve two contradictory impulses on the part of a person's family and others with a financial stake in the outcome of the medical care.

1. Preserve/protect human life whenever possible.

2. Avoid prolonging life "unnecessarily" (and this is always the difficult part) when a tremendous financial burden would be placed on others in a fruitless attempt to help a patient recover.

[JimRed]

God bless the family, and may His hand guide them.

[trumandogz]

I cannot imagine the pain the family must be going through and i will pray for them and their son, I also pray that they can let him go peacefully and that he will go in peace.

However, if they are not paying the hospital bill, they cannot expect the hospital and or tax payer to continue such futile treatment.

[silverleaf]

I don’t think this child’s condition is anywhere near that of Terry Schiavo nor is there any hope whatsoever of recovery for the child-

for Terry, who was on minimal support compared to this child, there was medical dissent about her prognosis and it was about quality of life, not quantity

Having read between the lines, not only the brain but this child’s entire body is disintegrating as the parents insist the machines keep pumping

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The hospital is missing a research bet, here. That is, will his brain cancer continue to grow? Assuming so, then what happens? As morbid as it sounds, there are any number of discoveries that can be made with very advanced cancer, rarely seen in a still living body.

I know this sounds cold, but the truth is that it gives his parents what they need for their son, even if there is no love left for him by the doctors.

[onemiddleamerican]

Sad to say this, but I suspect that if this was the son of a devout Muslim family arguing that cessation of heartbeat and not brain activity is how their faith decides death, the hospital would not be fighting to shut the machines down.

In the new America, some religion's beliefs are more sacred than others.

[Yaelle]

I do not understand. If total brain death = cessation of HB and breathing, why is his heart still beating? If there is a machine forcing his breathing and heart beat, wouldn’t that be understood by the rabbis and laws as “artificial?” Thus stopping an artificial control of these activities would show that the precious boy was Not doing the breathing or making his heart beat.

Very sad. I don’t know whether to wish a refuah shelemah in this case but I do just in case.

I disagree with Jewish teachings about some areas of life because I do not believe that someone needs to take a first breath to be alive, and I am furious with the ruling that a family cannot have a full Jewish burial for a stillborn child. It would be such a comfort for the grieving family. I feel that if the rabbis a millenium + ago had only seen an ultrasound image they would have ruled differently. And I believe G-d does rule differently. Maybe this example is similar if the poor boy is actually not breathing or living but a machine is forcing it.

[xJones]

It's such a difficult thing, Jackson. I only know this, that my family all have an agreement that if brain activity is gone with no hope, then just let go, let the body die naturally.

One can understand the parents' point of view with the traditional Orthodox Jewish love of life, but to keep that body alive on machines for who knows how many years is much worse than dying now, IMHO. Nevertheless, the choice should belong to them.

[Carley]

Ariel Sharon has been kept alive for years.

[wagglebee]

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[baa39]

If “brain dead” is the sole criterion we use to determine whether a life is worth sustaining, then based on the recent election, half the American electorate should be offered the opportunity of assisted suicide.

[Jim Noble]

I cared for a brain-dead Yeshiva boy many years ago (1977). He was maintained on a ventilator until everything else quit.

I was quite surprised at the reaction of his family and his classmates to the fact of his death. It was as if he had just been run over in the street by a car, not as if he'd been wasting away for months on a respirator in a dark hospital room.