Letters: McMath family lawyer isn’t helping
Re “Defending Jahi’s family,” Opinion, Jan. 21
After reading the Op-Ed article by Christopher Dolan, the lawyer representing the family of brain-dead teenager Jahi McMath, it’s easy to identify the true culprit in this sad case: Dolan himself.
We can all sympathize with Jahi’s family. What we do not care for is a lawyer who has given this poor family bad advice and prolonged their agony.
This case has nothing to do with personal rights; it has everything to do with being honest with one’s clients. No one can blame Jahi’s mother for fighting for the life of her child. But as painful a duty as it is, Dolan should have long ago explained to her that there is no real life left in her child.
The child will never recover, and Dolan must know this to be true. Hopefully, this tragic situation will soon resolve itself and Dolan can then, as he wishes for Jahi’s family, disappear from the public spotlight.
Charles Reilly
Manhattan Beach
Dolan refers to an anomalous New Jersey statute providing for personal religious belief to supersede medically sound determination of brain death — as if that legal aberration merits serious consideration elsewhere.
What he doesn’t disclose is that New Jersey’s law was passed in 1991 at the behest of a tiny religious minority and that, after 23 years, only one other state has enacted anything similar to that law.
A similarly ill-conceived, religiously prompted law, in force in Rhode Island for centuries, allows uncles to marry their nieces if they are part of that same religious minority. No other state allows incestuous unions of this sort.
Dolan’s harangue hardly helps his clients. Rather, it serves to emphasize the importance of keeping religion out of statehouses and hospitals.
Devra Mindell
Santa Monica
Scenario: A 13-year-old girl is in a car accident. Her father rushes to the hospital, only to learn she did not survive surgery.
In the operating room, he protests that she is not breathing. The surgeon replies that she is dead. The father is unconvinced. “Make her lungs move!,” he says. “I know you have machines. Who are you to tell me she is dead?”
The father professes “a strongly held belief in miracles” and insists on artificial efforts to keep his daughter’s chest rising and falling. He says God needs more time and claims the hospital is violating his freedom of religion.
How should this story end? When is a body just a body? When does freedom of religion become the right to invoke miracles to evade public policy? Can I ignore child safety seat laws because I believe God will miraculously protect my child without one?
Kevin T. Freeman
Anaheim
Jahi’s situation is indeed tragic. No opinions either way will change that. She is never going to become a viable being.
However, I wonder why folks don’t connect these two ideas: first, the futilely expensive ventilation to artificially keep a heart beating, and second, the cost of healthcare.
And yes, when I am brain dead, my ventilator should be turned off.
Janet Chesne
Santa Monica
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