Jahi McMath, the teen girl from Oakland who was at the center of a controversial debate, has been removed from the machines that have been keeping her alive for the last five years.

Why is the teen at the center of a medical debate?

Jahi McMath’s Life And Death

Jahi McMath died on June 22, almost five years after she was declared brain dead by doctors at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. According to family representatives, the machines that kept McMath alive were removed as she was suffering from liver failure and excessive bleeding as a result of an operation to treat an intestinal issue.

McMath’s ordeal began in 2013 when what was supposed to be a routine procedure to remove her tonsils resulted in irreversible brain damage and doctors declared her brain dead. Several specialists agreed with the declaration after various testing, but her family did not believe that the then 13-year-old was already dead and instead believed that she must be treated in the same way any other person with brain injury must be treated.

With permission from the Alameda County Superior Court, McMath was taken to a facility in New Jersey, which is the only state that allows families to reject declarations of brain death on religious grounds. Once there, McMath spent a bit of time at a hospital before being moved to a home where she spent the next years on feeding and breathing machines.

In the years that followed, McMath continued to grow taller, went through puberty, and celebrated her birthdays. Her family even released videos of her moving her foot or her hands in response to commands from her mother, as well as MRI results which showed that McMath had regained some brain activity.

‘Jahi McMath Effect’

The case of McMath and her family opened up the conversation about parental rights, as well as the accuracy of determining brain death. Eventually, McMath’s story prompted the “Jahi McMath Effect” wherein families then also rejected the brain dead diagnoses of their loved ones.

In the medical community, however, many deemed the tests done on McMath to be clear determiners of irreversible loss of brain function. That is, apart from Dr. Alan Shewmon of the University of California, Los Angeles, who reviewed almost 50 videos of McMath and determined that she did not qualify for brain death.

In a viewpoint article published in JAMA, Robert D. Truog of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School describes McMath’s case as one that raised some doubts regarding the determination of brain death in the United States.

“Cases like that of Jahi McMath cause great angst because they seem to cast doubt on the ability of the medical profession to distinguish between the living and the dead,” said Truog.