Treatment of brain-dead patients criticized

The cases of two young women declared brain-dead have generated sympathy for their families, but also have left some doctors and bioethicists upset about their treatment.

Many doctors are questioning the continued medical procedures performed on a 13-year-old Californian girl declared brain-dead weeks ago, calling interventions to provide nutrition to a dead body wrong and unethical.

In the other case, questions have been raised over the decision of a Texas hospital to refuse to remove a pregnant woman from a ventilator, although her husband says she is brain-dead. Her husband has asked for his wife to be taken off a breathing machine. The hospital, John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, has not commented publicly on her condition.