The Legacy of Jahi McMath
- PDF / 804,368 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 108 Downloads / 225 Views
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The Legacy of Jahi McMath Ariane Lewis* © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature and Neurocritical Care Society
Dear Editor, I recently wrote an article for Neurocritical Care on reconciling the case of Jahi McMath [1]. Based on contentions that despite the fact that Jahi was declared brain dead in 2013, her family and some physicians believed she had recovered neurologic function, I described the need for esteemed specialists skilled in the evaluation of persons with severe brain injuries to reevaluate Jahi. But before she could be formally reevaluated, she developed liver failure and had a cardiopulmonary arrest on June 22, 2018 [2]. Jahi’s mother commented that her daughter’s case “forced the world to rethink the issue of brain death” [2]. The degree to which this case was integrated into both academic and public conversation over the past 5 years is demonstrated by the fact that a search for ‘Jahi McMath’ yields 260 scholarly works on Google Scholar™ and 1695 newspaper articles on Nexis Uni™. It is clear that Jahi’s case has forced the world to think about brain death, but has it forced the world to rethink brain death? Although the legal debate as to whether Jahi died in 2013 or 2018 continues, [2] we can reflect now on her legacy on the medicolegal process of determining death. The 5-year period between cessation of Jahi’s brain function and cessation of her cardiopulmonary function confirms previous reports that the body of a brain dead person can
*Correspondence: [email protected] Division of Neurocritical Care, Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery, NYU Langone Medical Center, 530 First Avenue HCC‑5A, New York, NY 10016, USA
continue to function if appropriate somatic support is provided [1, 3]. However, because no clinician performed a neurologic examination on her and found her to have evidence of brain function, her case does not refute the notion that brain death is irreversible if it is determined appropriately in accordance with the 2011 Guidelines for Determination of Brain Death in Pediatric Patients [1]. From a legal perspective, it remains to be seen whether California, or any other state, will change their definition of death in response to Jahi’s lawyer’s position that the aforementioned guidelines do not comport with the legal definition of death as set forth in the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), upon which each state’s definition of death is modeled [4, 5]. Notably, while our concerns with the UDDA differ, I hope that Jahi’s case will prompt discussions about content revision to the UDDA due to problems highlighted by her case including (1) confusion surrounding the phrases “accepted medical standards” and the “entire brain,” (2) conflict about whether consent is required prior to determination of death, and (3) variations in management of religious objections to determination of death by neurologic criteria. Author Contributions A. Lewis was responsible for conception and drafting of the manuscript.
Source of
Data Loading...
