Replies

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.