Calif. hospital won’t aid in transfer of brain-dead girl

Associated Press

OAKLAND, Calif.

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, its lawyer said Tuesday.

Children’s Hospital Oakland will not permit the procedures to be performed on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of doctors who have examined her, lawyer Douglas Straus wrote in a letter to the girl’s family.

“Performing medical procedures on the body of a deceased human being is simply not something Children’s Hospital can do or ask its staff to assist in doing,” he said.

The refusal reversed the position articulated Monday by a hospital spokesman. He said the hospital would allow a doctor retained by the family to insert a feeding tube and to replace the oral ventilator keeping Jahi’s heart beating with a tracheal tube — surgical procedures that would stabilize Jahi if she is moved to a facility willing to keep caring for her.

Meanwhile, a state appeals court Tuesday refused to order the hospital to insert the tubes, saying the issue has to go first to the lower-court judge who has ordered the hospital to keep the girl on a ventilator until next Tuesday pending the family’s appeal.