HOUSTON — The parents of 2-year-old Annelise Camp have sued Texas Children's Hospital to prevent the facility from conducting brain death testing. Annelise Camp was involved in a drowning incident on Memorial Day.

Annelise Camp wandered into a hotel pool without a life jacket while her family was visiting relatives. Family members pulled her from the water and began CPR until first responders arrived, and she was taken to the Texas Children's west Houston location. Her heartbeat returned after an hour at the hospital, but she was dependent on a ventilator, according to court documents.

Three days after Annelise Camp's hospitalization, her parents filed a temporary restraining order against Texas Children's. They have refused any brain death testing and are requesting a permanent halt to such testing. The family is seeking a transfer to another hospital to receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment or stem cell therapies. The court granted the family's request for a temporary injunction.

Texas Children's stated in court documents that it contacted medical facilities to inquire about accepting Annelise Camp. Thirty-five of the 36 medical facilities contacted declined to accept her. One pending hospital stated it needed Annelise Camp to undergo brain death testing to consider a transfer. Physicians advised that Annelise Camp undergo testing for brain death after stating they had exhausted all treatment options. Texas Children's stated it wants to conduct testing to determine next steps in Annelise Camp's medical care but has no imminent plans to end her care.

Annelise Camp's father, Johnston Camp, told FOX 26 Houston in early June that Annelise Camp wandered into the hotel pool without her life jacket. "She never gave up when I asked her to do something… I’m never gonna give up on her," Camp said. The family's lawyer, Heath Novosad, stated that a court order prevents the Camps from speaking to The Texas Tribune. Texas Children's has declined to comment on the case.

David Magnus, a professor of medicine and biomedical ethics at Stanford University, commented on the broader implications of these types of cases. He said that if hospitals are no longer able to diagnose someone with brain death and are forced to keep more people on life support, it could strain resources such as ICU beds. "Using that scarce resource for somebody who has no chance of ever making any recovery doesn’t really make a lot of sense," Magnus said. "When the hospital beds are full, Texas will not be a good place to get sick."