In case you don’t recall the story of young Jahi McMath, allow us to catch you up. Jahi entered Children’s Hospital Oakland at the age of 13 in December 2013 for a somewhat complicated surgery to improve her airflow. Post-procedure, Jahi was alert and asked for a popsicle, but almost immediately suffered cardiac arrest and would be declared brain dead a matter of days later. This would begin a long battle between the hospital and the family to keep her on life support, despite the hospital saying “it would be unethical and ‘grotesque’ to require the hospital and its doctors to provide further medical care to a dead body.”
The family successfully moved Jahi from California to New Jersey, where the law allowed them to keep her on life support despite all signs pointing to complete brain death.
A GoFundMe page — started December 27, 2013, just three days after a California judge declared Jahi legally dead — has, to date, raised over $64,000.
A photo recently shared on the Keep Jahi Mcmath on life support Facebook page declares the little girl is “healthy and beautiful as ever, proving the naysayers wrong.”
A change.org petition to shut down public fundraising has a different take on the matter, writing:
There are susceptible people in the world who can be tricked or misguided into thinking this girl will wake up at some point by confusing coma with brain death.
Donations were and are given to this family, which in the past were proven by internet posts and irrefutable photos, that the family was spending their gofundme money on expensive dinners and designer items.
There are countless articles that can be found on patients who woke from a coma after several years. The difference between them and Jahi, is they WERE NOT BRAIN DEAD.
Each and every time one of these articles finds its way to a Jahi support page, some gullible person gives this family more money.
We’re not doctors and we haven’t examined Jahi so we can’t say for sure but if she is, in fact, dead for all intents and purposes, sustaining her ‘life’ at this point (we use that term loosely) is borderline criminal.
New donations have come into the GoFundMe page as recently as 24 days ago.