Nearly a week after releasing video clips of Jahi McMath apparently responding to verbal commands although she has been ruled brain-dead, the girl’s family is seeking a consensus from the medical community, saying she is “very much alive.”
If doctors agree that Jahi is brain-damaged and not brain-dead, the death certificate could be reversed, which would allow the family of the 13-year-old Oakland, Calif., girl to return her home from New Jersey, the Raw Story reports. California allows families to keep a relative on a ventilator on religious grounds after a declaration of brain death, the report says.
To that end, the news site says a lawyer for the family wants to arrange “a conference between several physicians who insist she exhibits signs of life and a court-appointed doctor who rejects their findings.”
Jahi was declared brain-dead last year after complications from a tonsillectomy. But last week the family’s lawyer released two video clips showing Jahi responding to her mother, Nailah Winkfield, who asks her daughter to move her hand, and the teen apparently moves her right hand. In another clip, the mother asks Jahi to move a foot, which she does after some verbal encouragement. The videos were released after the family asked the courts to have a judge declare the teen alive.
Read more at the Raw Story.