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Podcasts Take Two
Jahi McMath story highlights the difficult aftermath of a brain dead diagnosis
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Jan 10, 2014
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Jahi McMath story highlights the difficult aftermath of a brain dead diagnosis
Two recent cases raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.
FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2013 file photo, Nailah Winkfield, mother of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, cries before a courtroom hearing regarding McMath, in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at Children's Hospital Oakland over a week after doctors declared her brain dead, following a supposedly routine tonsillectomy.
FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2013 file photo, Nailah Winkfield, mother of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, cries before a courtroom hearing regarding McMath, in Oakland, Calif. McMath remains on life support at Children's Hospital Oakland over a week after doctors declared her brain dead, following a supposedly routine tonsillectomy.
(
Ben Margot/AP
)

Two recent cases raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.

We've been following the story of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old girl in Oakland declared brain dead following complications from surgery.

Her family firmly believes Jahi is still alive, and they successfully fought for the legal right to remove her from a hospital which had planned to take her off a ventilator. Meanwhile in Texas, a hospital is keeping a brain dead pregnant woman named Marlise Munoz alive to save the baby, despite her family's wishes.

For more on the very difficult questions which arise in these two cases, we're joined by Benedict Carey of the New York Times.