Doctors Said Sheâ€™s â€œBrain Deadâ€ But Sheâ€™s Still Alive, Now They Wonâ€™t Reverse...

As the state court has permitted Jahi McMathâ€™s mother to present evidence from a doctor who has examined Jahi and believes she does not meet brain death criteria, lawyer Christopher Dolan is making a federal case out of it. From his press release:

After exhausting all available avenues to work with the State Department of Vital Statistics, Alameda County Department of Public Health, County Coronerâ€™s Office and County Counsel, to have Jahi McMathâ€™s incomplete, and invalid death certificate (not even signed by an attesting physician) rescinded, and her basic human rights restoredâ€¦

The suit requests that the Federal Court order restoration of Jahi McMathâ€™s fundamental Constitutional rights and declare that she is not brain dead as per the criteria established under California Law.

The lawsuit also seeks to have the Court deem unconstitutional the brain death statute as it provides no mechanism by which evidence can be presented that the original determination of brain death is no longer valid in the face of significant scientific and medical evidence of brain function like that currently demonstrated by Jahi McMath.

That last bit seems a potentially winning argument to me regardless of Jahiâ€™s condition.

I believe in brain death and once thought Jahi was certainly deadâ€“to the great irritation of many who usually agree with my positions.

But I also wrote that my eyebrow would raise if her body didnâ€™t deteriorate as usually happens pretty quickly in brain death cases.

Now, two years later, Jahi has not deterioratedâ€“not unprecedented, but rareâ€“and a prominent neurologist who I know and trust has personally examined her, believes she no longer meets brain dead criteria. My eyebrows are past the crown of my head!

I think the proper course here is for there to be a full-bore, transparent reopening of this case.

So does neurological science, because if her brain function has indeed reversed from â€œdeadâ€ to â€œprofoundly disabled,â€ it is unprecedented and requires intense study.

So does the integrity of the system. No one should be forced to stay dead if facts on the ground change. Moreover, if the facts have not changed, it is important for the public to know.

Let me be clear. I am not saying she is alive. But I am saying there is sufficient doubt to warrant another hard look. And I donâ€™t understand why some are so angrily and emotionally invested in her being dead.

1). You accepted the brain scan. What date was that done?

You say that as if it is some sort of "admission" on my part that I am wrong and Jahi is really alive. It is nothing of the sort. It is evidence that the brain has, in fact, significantly degraded. I have seen better looking brains sitting in jars of formaldehyde; their relatively good appearance does not mean they are alive. The date the video clip showing the MRI was uploaded to youtube on Oct 3, 2014. Again, dates do not mean much, especially when they are so far in the past and there is no current, verifiable evidence that Jahi's body is even still hooked up to machines to keep the heart beating for an unnatural length of time following death.

2). As far as, "Why do you want so much to believe that a brain-dead person is alive?"

I have made no claims she is not brain dead and even two years ago I stated I had no problem with her being called brain dead.

But brain does not mean a person is a corpse or a cadaver etc...

There is a major disconnect going on here. Brain dead *is* dead. Using machines to artificially prolong heart function is irrelevant to that fact. If you object to referring to the remains as a corpse, cadaver, etc., then how *do* you expect people to refer to the dead body?

What if Jahi's heart were removed from the corpse and placed into an oxygenated nutrient broth so that it can continue to beat indefinitely? Would you still think Jahi is alive?

In response, people, such ad you and others, made very specific claims as to what will happen due to her brain death.

I took a wait and see attitude.

Clearly your, and other predictions, did not occur.

Um--take a close look at that MRI. It is on this page, you have to scroll down a little to see it. That MRI shows that exactly what I, and others, said would happen DID happen. If I were a little less graphically challenged, I would take that picture and mark it with arrows and circles to draw your attention to exactly what I am talking about and embed the annotated picture here; unfortunately, my computer and html skills are not that strong.

Regardless, look at that MRI. Within the skill, you can see fragments of brain tissue, mostly composed of fragments of the cerebral cortex. The brain tissue fragments are the light areas within the skull. The dark areas within the skull are liquid. Note how there is a layer of liquid between the brain fragments and the skull. Where the brain stem (the part of the brain that controls the body) should be is nothing but liquid.

In short, that MRI shows that exactly what I said has been documented to happen after brain death has, in fact, happened. Much of the brain DID, in fact, liquify. Only some mummified fragments remain. They remain because the proteolytic enzymes that are responsible for breaking down cell structure do stop working after a while, and without living cells to make more enzymes, the cellular decay process stops.

This means she was either not brain dead but severely brain damaged. Or it means the determination of and brain death definition are not as straightforward or understood as thought.

As I have already said many times, the gross physical appearance of a tissue does not mean that the tissue is functional. And, in this case, the gross physical appearance of Jahi's brain shows an advanced state of deterioration--I'd be surprised if the brain of any living person were in such bad condition.

Jahi was determined to be brain dead on the basis of tests that showed there is no brain function. And those tests were performed, IIRC, six times. Thus, she is dead by objective medical criteria.

Perhaps there is no difference between those two possibilities.

Um, there is a HUGE difference between dead and injured. If I were injured and had to go to the emergency room, I wouldn't want my treatment delayed because the emergency staff is unsure about the difference between dead and injured and were taking extraordinary measures to provide care to patients who are dead on arrival! I'd want the corpses to be in the morgue while the living patients receive care.

2a). As far as these things you think:

"What do you, personally, stand to gain by this? Are you, in fact, the person who often posts using a variant of the name "John Benton", who seems obsessed with denying that death is really death? Or are you a lawyer involved with the case, trying to get a feel for the kinds of medical/scientific arguments that support the determination of death, so that you can try to find a rebuttal for them that will hold up in court?"

I am obviously not anything of the sort and your thinking so us an indication of paranoia on your part.

You are losing rationality.

There is nothing irrational about speculating that you are, in fact, the person who has used variants of the name "John Benton" to post missives on other forums claiming that Jahi is alive, and the medical/scientific community is wrong about determination of death. There is a lot of similarity between his posts and yours. There is also nothing irrational about speculating that you are closely involved in this case, and you are using this forum as a place to throw out possibilities to see if anything here will stick, that can then be used in legal proceedings.

Of course, since I have no ability to trace IP addresses, I cannot match your IP to the one used by "John Benton", and I only have the fact that you and at least one of the lawyers involved in the Jahi Mcmath case have problems with spelling and grammar, I cannot prove these speculations. However, the fact is that *something* is going on to make you so resistant to accepting the fact (at least publicly) that this little girl died in Dec. 2013.

As far as this: "Why does no evidence on the matter make a dent in your belief?"

What "believe" would you be referring to and cite a post by me to support your attribution of a "belief" to me.

The belief that a person can still be alive despite complete absence of functional brain tissue is just that: a belief. It cannot supported by any evidence. And the fact is that tens or hundreds of thousands of people are declared dead every year based on brain death criteria--it looks like the medical community has ample experience with which to diagnose brain death.

What possible benefit is there to artificially maintaining a heart beat in a dead body? Even if the decay process could be stopped, presumably with hormones and massive quantities of antibiotics and antifungals, what possible benefit can there be to preserving the illusion of life? It seems to me that if the family wants so much for her remains to look alive, they'd be able to accomplish it at far less expense by doing something like the father of Rosalia Lombardo did in 1920. I will point out that X-rays show that little Rosalia's brain, although shrunken, is in far better shape than Jahi's. And Rosalia has been dead for nearly 100 years.

It has now been two years.
1. Do you claim that today her heart is not beating?
2. If so, when did it stop, i.e when did the ventilation lose effectiveness?

What I have said is that it is extremely unlikely that her heart is still beating. I base this on a number of factors:

1. Her body was already decomposing at the time it was released from the hospital, as per the testimony of a nurse who was a member of the ICU team charged with Jahi's care. At that time, Jahi's intestinal lining was sloughing off and being passed (to put it delicately).
2. There are NO recent photos or videos of the body. Yet, early on, Jahi's mother posted several videos and pictures in an attempt to "prove" that Jahi is alive. The most likely explanation for the cessation of videos and photos is that the heart stopped beating, making it impossible to slow the decomposition process any further.
3. The facility to which Jahi's body was supposedly released is not a medical facility. It is highly unlikely that such a facility would have the medical technology and drugs necessary to keep the heart functioning, even if the heart were removed from the body (which would make the task a lot easier).
4. The situation is a little more complicated than "when did the ventilation lose effectiveness?" All the ventilation does is exchange gases: shed carbon dioxide from the blood and allow the blood to become reoxygenated. But oxygen is only one requirement for the heart to remain functional. As a living person, you vary the rate of your breathing in order to regulate the pH of your blood, which is controlled by the carbon dioxide concentration. Being dead, Jahi's body had no mechanism to control carbon dioxide concentration. Thus, the pH of the blood would have begun to fluctuate immediately upon death, leading to cell damage (because cells are very picky about pH). And this is just one of the physiological consequences of being dead. Add up all of the physiological insults--toxins being dumped into the circulation by tissues breaking down, lack of pH control, lack of hormones to regulate body functions, etc., etc., and you get a situation that is not at all conducive to heart health. A young heart like Jahi's might last longer before all of the insults finally cause it to succumb--but as long as it is still in the corpse, it is being damaged. So it will stop, regardless of the ventilator.

And so on. I have no reason to believe that the heart is still beating at this time. And even if it were--what possible benefit is there to maintaining the illusion of life in a corpse? Frankly, it is creepy.

Of course I have no direct knowledge of when her heart stopped; given the nature of communication from that family (judging by the Facebook page), I do not think anyone outside of a small select handful knows that. But there is a distinct lack of evidence that the heart continues to beat in a corpse that is still hooked to machines.

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