NY family opposes end to care for brain-dead boy

NEW YORK (AP) - A Washington hospital has asked a judge for permission to stop treating a brain-dead 12-year-old cancer patient, even though his ultra-religious New York parents want to keep him on life support.

Motl Brody of Brooklyn was pronounced dead this week after a half-year fight against a brain tumor, and doctors at Children's National Medical Center in Washington say the seventh-grader's brain has ceased functioning entirely.

But for the past few days, a machine has continued to inflate and deflate his lungs. As of late Friday afternoon, his heart was still beating with the help of a cocktail of intravenous drugs and adrenaline.

That heartbeat has prompted Motl's parents, who are Orthodox Jews, to refuse the hospital's request to remove all artificial life support.

Under some interpretations of Jewish religious law, including the one accepted by the family's Hasidic sect, death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning.

That means Motl "is alive, and his family has a religious obligation to secure all necessary and appropriate medical treatment to keep him alive," the family's attorney wrote in a court filing this week.

The family has asked the hospital to leave the breathing machine on and keep administering drugs until the boy's heart and lungs no longer respond.

Disagreements between families and medical providers over when to end care for terminally ill patients are common, experts say, but this case wound up in court with unusual speed.

Unlike Terri Schiavo or Karen Ann Quinlan, who became the subjects of right-to-die battles when they suffered brain damage and became unconscious, Motl's condition has deteriorated beyond a persistent vegetative state, his physicians say. His brain has died entirely, according to an affidavit filed by one of his doctors.

His eyes are fixed and dilated. His body neither moves nor responds to stimulation. His brain stem shows no electrical function, and his brain tissue has begun to decompose.

"This is death at its simplest," the hospital's lawyers wrote in a court filing.

The hospital said it would help the family move what it called the boy's "earthly remains" to another medical facility, but has found none willing to accept a brain-dead child.

The dispute wound up in court Sunday, when the family asked a federal judge to block the hospital from doing any further tests for brain activity.

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