By Uche Onyebadi

JAHIMCMATH is neither dead nor alive. It all depends on who you ask; as well as on what you want to believe. Doctors at the Oakland, California, hospital where her body lies have pronounced her brain dead. Three independent physicians have also reaffirmed that diagnosis.

Even the coroner’s office has already issued a death certificate in her name. But to her mother, NailahWinkfield, uncle and some relatives, Jahi is not dead. In fact, her mother claims that she is “improving.” Nailah further told the San Francisco Chronicle that “I will always fight for Jahi until she is ready to go, her own self.

“I can’t play God. She’s going to get better or she’s not, but I see her getting better.”

Here are the facts. Jahi is (or was) a 13-year-old girl who had gone for a tonsillectomy surgery at the Oakland hospital last December. Things went awry thereafter. Massive blood loss commenced. A cardiac arrest followed. She was put on a ventilator, but doctors later pronounced her brain dead. The hospital authorities want to remove the ventilator but Nailah and her people refused the “offer” claiming that Jahi was still alive. They went to court and got a stay of action on the ventilator issue.

But now, the hospital cannot keep Jahi’s body forever or continue “treatment” on what it claims to be a dead body. Nailah and her relatives have now found a new hospital that will accept Jahi. The only problem is what might happen between the hospital where she lies and the new hospital where she is to be taken.

Jahi will be moved while on the ventilator, but the Oakland hospital refused the family’s request that some complex feeding tubes be inserted in the body for the transfer on the ground that there was no point performing a procedure on a dead body. The County court agrees with the hospital. And, Nailah has undertaken full responsibility for whatever that might happen to her daughter in the process of moving her to the new hospital.

Jahi’s case directly pits human nature against science. Nobody wants to lose his or her son or daughter. Nailah, the mother she is, appears to see what doctors cannot fathom. Where they see a cadaver, she sees a human being capable of emotions and movement. If the movements she claims to see in her child is more psychological than real, no one can tell. For sure, she is clinging onto the belief and prayer that her daughter is still alive. Who can blame her?

For the doctors who apply science in their profession, Jahi can longer be counted among the living. Brain death, they say, is an irreversible condition. Their willingness to pull the ventilator off Jani and their decision not to perform any procedure on the “dead” child in order to move her to another hospital might seem inhuman. But, can you really blame them? By training and experience, they know when the fire of life has gone out. However, doctors cannot play God.

Jahi’s case has brought back memories of Terri Schiavo who had brain damage in 1990 and was put on life support. Her husband saw the hopelessness of the situation and wanted to pull the plug and allow her to die. But, her mother, father, brother and relatives refused to let her go. They, like Nailah, always saw a flicker of life in Terri. It later became a court battle which Michael Sciavo eventually won. On March 31, 2005 Terri’s feeding tube was shut down and she “died” several years after her death.

The hope in Jahi’s case is that it should not go on as long as that of Terri Schiavo. Such long periods stretch emotions to the brink. No one is ever happy as long as it remains an issue. In this case, Nailah and her clan will not be emotionally stable as they anticipate a miracle somewhere down the line. On their part, the doctors who want to switch off her ventilator will always be looked upon as people without a soul.

One thing though is that in both cases, and many more, it shows the extent to which human life is appreciated in the American society. There are societies where the death of a thousand people will mean very little, if anything at all. Not here in the US. The death of one American is enough to create a fireball which will run across the nation.

As a society, a lot of premium is put on human life, even the lives of criminals and the mentally deranged who take other people’s lives. Perhaps it time to let science prevail over human nature so that Jahi can rest in peace. But, even as I say so, I doubt if I will not take her mother’s position if I were in her shoes.