DEAD AND/OR ALIVE
A legal quirk means you can be dead in New York but alive in New Jersey
"...If youre brain dead in the US youre dead. Legally. Except New Jersey, if you have a religious exemption, says Thaddeus Pope, law professor and bioethicist at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Youd think whos alive and whos dead would be one of the few questions on which all of American society could have clarity and consistency on....
The question of whether a declaration of death according to brain death is truly definitive has come under greater scrutiny recently due to the ongoing case of Jahi McMath. McMath was declared dead in California, on December 11, 2013 on the basis of her brain death, but her family rejects that medical verdict, and is now a legal battle to have it reversed. In the meanwhile, McMath remains on life support thanks to clinicians in New Jersey, found by her family, who agreed to oversee her continued use of a ventilator and feeding tube.
McMaths family has said declaring Jahi dead by by brain death goes against their religious beliefs. But this argument has been made by other families and dismissed in several states. The McMath case has gained legal traction as the family has also claimed to have evidence that Jahi does in fact show signs of brain activity. And, in an additional argument, the McMaths claim that the legal definition of death is not, in practice, applied medically. The law technically states that there should be cessation of all functions of the entire brain in order to be a case of brain death, yet, the McMaths argue, doctors often classify patients with extremely basic brain functions as brain dead....
If the McMaths lawsuit is successful, the road will be cleared for further challenges to how death is medically recognized across the US....
If the jury decides that Jahi, once officially dead, is in fact alive, or if they believe that the legal definition of brain death is not sufficiently applied in medical practice, it will create legal ambiguity in declaring death. ...
It would also reflect a disturbing reality: there are different ways to draw the line between brain death and brain function, between life and death. If the case is decided in the McMaths favor, it would illustrate that brain death a value judgment, says Pope. Its not a scientific truth that we discover. Its something we decide, its something we create.
As the New Jersey law shows, even death is subjective."
https://qz.com/1253987/a-legal-quirk-means-you-can-be-dead-in-new-york-but-alive-in-new-jersey/
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