Brain-dead teen boy in legal limbo

PHILADELPHIA — Five times, Rumpa Banerjee has called New Jersey hospitals to see if they would take in her 14-year-old son.

Five times, the hospitals have told the Burlington County woman that first they need to speak to officials at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where her son is now — on life support for nearly three weeks after suffering severe brain injury in a fire. And then, nothing. CHOP physicians have declared Areen Chakrabarti “brain dead” and seek to remove him from life support against his mother’s wishes, according to the family’s attorney, Christopher Bagnato. But she has faith that more can be done.

“It shouldn’t be their choice,” Banerjee said Thursday, referring to the hospital’s physicians. “It is my son. It’s my choice.”

The hospital has declined to comment.

Banerjee seeks to move Areen to a hospital in New Jersey in part because the state’s law regarding brain death would, at least for now, prevent a hospital from declaring him to be legally dead — a necessary step before he can be removed from life support, attorney Bagnato said.

That strategy does indeed have a legal basis, said Thaddeus Pope, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minn. In most states, a person can be declared legally dead if either heart or brain function has completely, irreversibly ceased, he said.

But years ago, at the prompting of the state’s large Orthodox Jewish community, New Jersey lawmakers enacted a special religious exemption. If the family’s faith dictates that a patient is alive so long as the cardiovascular system is functioning, then a physician cannot declare the person dead based on brain death alone, said Pope, director of Mitchell Hamline’s Health Law Institute.