Alittle girl who drowned in a pool on Memorial Day and was later declared ‘brain dead’ is at the center of a battle to allow her to remain on life support to give her more time to potentially recover.

Key Takeaways:

• Annelise Camp drowned in a hotel pool while visiting relatives on Memorial Day.

• After an hour, emergency medical professionals were able to get her heart beating again.

• Doctors wanted to declare her brain dead two days after her arrival, but her parents refused, and fought to obtain a restraining order.

• Texas Children’s Hospital now claims to have “exhausted all medically viable options” and is seeking Camp’s transfer to another hospital.

The Backstory:

According to reports, Annelise Camp and her family were visiting relatives on Memorial Day when she went back into the hotel pool after removing her life jacket. Her cousin found her unresponsive and pulled her from the pool, and the family then began CPR as they waited for paramedics to arrive.

“She had water coming out of her mouth,” Johnston Camp, who performed CPR on his daughter, told ABC station KTRK.

Annelise is estimated to have been without a heartbeat for an hour.

Two days after she was brought to the hospital, doctors declared her brain dead. However, the family wants to give her more time.

“If there’s that 1% chance or that 5% chance of results, we’re going to take it,” said her father, Johnston Camp. He added, “If you give her the best opportunity, and she makes it, and she survives, and she keeps progressing, she’s going to have a lifelong of testimonies.”

After receiving a temporary restraining order, brain death testing moved forward along with supportive care, pending a June 11 hearing. Brain death testing was to begin on June 5.

Paperwork of an agreement between the family and the hospital shows that the hospital agreed to try to transfer her to another facility that was willing to accept her.

The Details:

Following media reports about Annelise, Texas Children’s is now claiming that it has “exhausted all medically viable options” for the girl and has reached out to 24 other hospitals to request transfer.

“Our hearts, thoughts and prayers are with the family and their loved ones during this difficult time,” Texas Children’s Hospital said in a statement. “Our expert and dedicated clinical team have exhausted all medically viable options and we continue to work tirelessly to honor the family’s wishes while following legal guidelines. As such, per the family’s request, we have already delayed testing for a week and have formally requested transfer to an unprecedented 24 hospitals. This is a tragic and heartbreaking situation and we will continue to do what is in the best interest of the patient from a clinical and ethical standpoint. Out of respect for the family’s privacy, we are unable to comment further.”

The hospital must give Annelise supportive care until a court hearing takes place on Thursday, June 11. Her family is hoping to move her to a facility that offers hyperbaric and stem cell treatments.

“This is a girl who never gave up when I asked her to do something,” her father said. “I’m never going to give up on her.”

A fundraiser has been launched to help the family with medical expenses.

Commentary:

Author and retired anesthesiologist Heidi Klessing has been speaking out on X about the case of Annelise Camp.

She wrote, in part, on June 8:

Brain death is not death, but a utilitarian social construct designed to free up ICU beds and facilitate organ donation. People declared brain dead are not biologically dead: their hearts beat, they absorb oxygen, they metabolize food and excrete waste, heal their wounds and fight infections….

And people declared brain dead under the American Academy of Neurology’s brain death guideline are not even legally dead, because the Guideline explicitly allows people with ongoing brain function to be declared dead.

This is in defiance of the legal definition of death under the Uniform Determination of Death Act which requires the irreversible cessation of ALL functions of the entire brain including the brain stem.

… Brain death is not death but an ethical choice, a way of removing human rights from vulnerable, neurologically disabled people.

The Bottom Line:

In Texas, a declaration of brain death is considered death, and the hospital is not required to have the consent of the family to remove life-sustaining support. This means that the state’s 25-day rule does not apply in this situation or in other declarations of brain death.