It’s been years since we last heard any news in the (still ongoing!) saga of Jahi McMath, who was pronounced brain dead at the age of 13 after a routine tonsil surgery in 2013 went terribly wrong at Oakland Children's Hospital. Jahi’s family refused to believe the diagnosis and has kept her on life support in an undisclosed location in New Jersey ever since, occasionally posting videos of their daughter who has become a something of a rallying cry to the pro-life movement. Her pulse is still beating, though medical experts have insisted she remains brain dead. But the family now has the support of a new medical opinion from UCLA pediatrics and professor Dr. Alan Shewmon, who has submitted a sworn medical opinion that Jahi McMath is still alive though his opinion is based on YouTube videos.
Medical diagnosis via YouTube video strikes me as a little unreliable, but hey, this guy’s got a PhD in pediatrics and neurology, and I don’t. "The video recordings, as crude and unsystematic as they are, represent the only way at present to decide whether Jahi is permanently comatose or in a minimally conscious state with intermittent responsiveness," Shewmon wrote in a sworn declaration to Alameda County Superior Court.
“There is a very strong correspondence between between the body part requested, and the next body part that moves,” Shewmon also said. “This cannot reasonably be explained by chance.”
Dr. Shewman has personally visited Jahi in New Jersey which is the only state that allows a family to reject a diagnosis of brain death on religious grounds though he has not personally observed any of her movements. Shewman also maintains that Jahi has started puberty and menstruated.
It is no small matter that there is a significant financial difference in how much money the family is entitled to if Jahi is legally reclassified as alive. Wrongful death lawsuit awards in California are capped at $250,000. But wrongful injury awards have no limit, as courts can order medical costs to be paid indefinitely.
A cynic could argue the family is chasing a larger settlement, but the legal and medical implications are enormously significant. “Everybody, even the plaintiffs, agrees that Jahi was [brain] dead in December 2013,” law professor Thaddeus Pope told the Chronicle. “What her family is saying is that she is not dead now. That is significant because there has never been a case ever in human history where somebody was correctly declared dead and had it rescinded later.”
Related: Family Of Woman Killed By Toxic Tea Sues Chinatown Herbalist For Wrongful Death
