Yusef

A 9-year-old boy named Yusef Camp who lives in inner-city Washington ate a pickle that he had bought from a street vendor.  Soon after, he went into convulsions and collapsed on the sidewalk.  A rescue squad took him to the nearest emergency room where his stomach was pumped.  Tests revealed that the pickle contained traces of marijuana and PCP.  The boy suffered severe respiratory depression and was left unconscious, unable to breathe for an unknown period.

            The emergency room personnel restored respiration by putting him on a ventilator, but they were unable to restore him to consciousness or get him breathing adequately on his own.  The physicians concluded that his brain function was irreversibly destroyed and that there was no possibility of recovery.  They might have simply pronounced him dead and then stopped the ventilator, but the situation soon became more complicated.  Two of the attending neurologists were convinced that the patient’s brain was totally dead, but one believed that he had minor brain function still in place. So they were incapable of pronouncing the patient dead based on loss of brain function. Now the question became, what should they do? Their patient was still living but permanently unconscious, breathing only because he was on the ventilator. The physicians pointed out that there was nothing more they could do except keep the ventilator running, perhaps indefinitely and maintain the body in a persistent or permanent vegetative state.  The parents are Muslims, members of the Nation of Islam, who firmly believed in the power Allah.  They believe that Allah would intervene if it was his will, and that it was the physicians’ job to give Allah the opportunity.

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*http://floiakoatbp.blogspot.com/2009/03/bioethics-note.html