Hospital won’t aid transfer of girl on ventilator

Hospital won’t aid transfer of girl on ventilator

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California hospital is unwilling to allow an outside doctor to fit a 13-year-old declared brain dead after tonsil surgery with the breathing and feeding tubes that would allow her to be safely transferred to another facility.

Lawyer Douglas Straus said today that Children’s Hospital Oakland would not permit the procedures on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of the doctors who have examined her.

But Straus reiterated in a letter to the lawyer representing McMath’s mother that the hospital would release the girl’s body as soon as her family provided a detailed plan about accomplishing the move.

Meanwhile, a state appeals court judge today refused to order the hospital to insert the tubes, saying the issue has to go first to a lower court judge.