Tow #14: Article: "Jahi McMath, Alive in Social Media" by Meghan Daum

An author for the Los Angeles Times, Meghan Daum, has written many novels and essays on social and cultural issues. On December 31, 2013 she published an opinion piece about, Jahi McMath, a thirteen year-old girl who has been brain dead since December 12th, 2013. Daum believed that McMath should be taken off of the ventilator this is currently keeping her alive. In McMath's court case, the court decided to keep McMath on a ventilator until at least January 7th, 2014. The original deadline was December 30th, but the court ruled to extend it because the parents do not believe their child is dead and plan to airlift her to a hospital in New York. McMath became brain dead after undergoing a routine tonsillectomy and went into cardiac arrest. When a person is brain dead, all of their brain functions have completely stopped and it is irreversible. Nothing can make that person's brain function again. It is for this reason that McMath should be taken off the ventilator. The doctors have already done all that they can do and the girl's state has not changed. Although a routine procedure should never go as wrong as it went, nothing can change what has already happened to McMath. Some people argue that McMath needs to stay on the ventilator because she is "only brain dead" and the doctors are trying to kill her because they want her organs. However, being brain dead is not the same as a coma. When a person is in a coma, there is still brain activity. There is no activity in McMath's brain and to keep hoping for her to wake up is futile. It is a waste of the ventilator machine to keep McMath alive and should her parents chose to have her organs donated, they could be useful to someone who is dying. It is a tragedy that McMath became brain dead in a routine procedure and the doctors who made the mistake most certainly should have to pay for it, however now that McMath has been kept alive for almost a month by a machine, it is time to take her off of it.