Real Science Radio: Neonatologist on RSR about Jahi McMath

[Jefferson]

Neonatologist on RSR about Jahi McMath

This is the show from Monday January 6th, 2014

Summary:

On Those Who Recover from Being Brain Dead: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart interviews Paul Byrne, M.D., board certified neonatologist and pediatrician, founder of the NICU at the Children's Medical Center in St. Louis and clinical professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toledo. Bob and Dr. McMath discuss Jahi, her condition, that she is not dead, and others who have recovered from being diagnosed as "brain dead".

 

[Jukia]

When is someone dead?

 

[Tyrathca]

When is someone dead?

According to Dr Byrne it is only when the heart stops beating, there are no other criteria for him it seems. It doesn't seem to matter the degree of dead brain tissue or whether someone will ever be able to so much as take a breath of themselves.

He strikes me as extremely dishonest and misleading in his examples and descriptions to lay people. Appealing to ignorance and misguided rules of thumb. Both he and Enyart also make unfounded aspersions regarding the desire for organ donation guiding most pushes for classifying someone as brain death (this is not the case).

The fact is he is a fringe dweller on this issue with regards tot he rest of them medical profession particularly most intensivists and neurologists.

 

[Granite]

This girl is gone.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...ead-ever-wakes-up-feeling-pretty-good/253315/

"No one who has met the criteria for brain death has ever survived -- no one."

 

[Jabin]

Jehi's brain has no blood flow. It's necrotic. Black goo. No one with a skull of black goo has ever recovered (even though some people, by their own breathing, very compellingly counter my assertion).

Stephen Thorpe, the boy supposedly declared brain-dead by four doctors, always had blood flow to his brain. He always had brain waves. And, he was only in a MEDICALLY INDUCED COMA. It's not credible that any of his doctors claimed him to be brain-dead.

 

[Granite]

Jehi's brain has no blood flow. It's necrotic. Black goo. No one with a skull of black goo has ever recovered (even though some people, by their own breathing, very compellingly counter my assertion).

Stephen Thorpe, the boy supposedly declared brain-dead by four doctors, always had blood flow to his brain. He always had brain waves. And, he was only in a MEDICALLY INDUCED COMA. It's not credible that any of his doctors claimed him to be brain-dead.

Absolutely correct.

It's enormously difficult for the family to admit, but their girl is dead. And to say otherwise is a mockery of the facts.