Compassion & Choices Defends California ’s Legal Definition of Brain Dead as Dead (Israel Stinson)

Compassion & Choices has filed an amicus brief defending California’s legal definition of brain dead as dead. The California UDDA is under challenge because of a decision by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles to stop artificial life support for a brain dead two-year-old boy. The deceased boy’s mother and a right-wing religious group have filed a lawsuit in a federal appeals court. A federal judge previously dismissed the lawsuit in March 2017, Jonee Fonseca et al v. Karen Smith et al, challenging the state law’s definition of death filed on behalf of Israel Stinson’s mother, Jonee Fonseca, and Life Legal Defense Foundation by the Pacific Justice Institute.  The plaintiffs claim the state’s health department director, Karen Smith, M.D., should have prevented the hospital from discontinuing Israel’s artificial life support in August 2016, even though a state court order declared he was legally dead, so his artificial life support should end. “The modern consensus that brain death is actual death derived from years of painstaking study and recommendations by dedicated medical and legal researchers … with joint support from the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws,” said the Compassion & Choices brief filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.  In April 2016, doctors at UC Davis Medical Center ...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs