Stakeholders Rough Draft

Jahi McMath is a 13-year-old girl who was admitted to the hospital for a routine tonsillectomy. After she had awoken from the surgery she started bleeding, seizing, and went into a coma. After 3 days of this, doctors concluded that Jahi was officially brain dead and therefore, should be taken off of life support. The parents, not wanting to let go of their daughter, took the situation to court where the judge ultimately decided to let Jahi be kept on life support for an extra week, giving the family time to file a petition. Ranging from family members to doctors to end of life experts, there were varying opinions of why Jahi should or should not be kept on the machines that keep her blood pumping.

            The first and most obvious stakeholder that can be identified in this situation is the parents and family members of Jahi McMath. Even after test have concluded that their loved one is legally brain dead, the family still firmly believe that their daughter is “alive”. They see her heart beating as a sign of life even though the machines are held responsible. They also have seen and felt the twitching of Jahi’s muscles which they claim is yet another sign of definite life. They fail to acknowledge that this is merely a muscle spasm and that nothing is truly going on inside of this little girl. To them, Jahi is still clearly alive and they don’t understand why someone who is alive and trying to recover should be taken off of life support.

            The attorney of the family also believes that Jahi should be kept on life support, but for much different reasons that the family themselves. The attorney does not seem to openly state that he is fighting for this issue because he believes that Jahi has a chance at recovering, however, he states “I am fighting for the right of parents to direct the health care of their child and for them to make the choice.” This is a very interesting point of view because he seems to genuinely care about the well being of the family. The family will be at peace with whatever decision feels right to them. If the state ends up taking the girl off of life support and the family does not agree, they will most likely always be unhappy with the outcome.

            The power of prayer is also another stakeholder that can be seen in this article. The family continually states that they want to public to pray for their daughters’ recovery. They also state that they strongly believe that God will heal their little girl and she will someday wake up and be fine. This claim seems to give the family of Jahi a secure sense of false hope. They do not seem to grasp the concept of brain death because if they did, they would understand that it is not scientifically or medically possible that any circumstance could change the outcome of their loved one.

            I found there to be two main stakeholders that are against keeping Jahi on life support. Their claims and reasoning behind such claims seem to be similar although their backgrounds are much different. The first is the doctors that were directly treating Jahi’s case. They preformed the neurological tests that prove that she is definitely brain dead. Once they presented this tough information to the family, they were asked to go against protocol and preform the test again. After multiple more tests all concluding the same outcome, the doctors believe that the only next step is to take Jahi off of life support. The doctors know from history and years of experience that there has never once been a case where a brain dead person has recovered. Since tests have proved the finality of her brain death, the only logical conclusion is to remove such unnecessary measurements to keep a dead person alive.

            End of life experts have the same thinking and knowledge of these doctors without the background of being an actual doctor. Their whole professions revolve around what the end of a life actually means. To avoid any question between being in a come and being brain dead they state “no one has ever recovered from brain death, as it's not a coma or vegetative state.” They know from their studies that “brain death is just as final as cardiac death.” When a person’s heart stops beating, the finality of this death is not usually in question. Brain death is the same thing but in a different part of the body so it should be treated in the same manner. These are the assumptions that end of life experts work off of and what they have determined in the case of this young girl. She is dead; whether is be because of cardiac failure or brain death, the outcome is the same. Therefore, it is only logical to take a dead person off of life support.