Injured Man Chooses to End Life Support

An Indiana man who recentlysuffered a severe spinal injury made his own decision to refuse life support.

Tim Bowers was deer huntingwhen he fell 16 feet from a tree.  He wasparalyzed from the shoulders down and doctors believed he would never againbreathe on his own.  When faced with thisprognosis, the Bowers family asked the doctors if he could be brought out ofsedation, told of his condition, and decide for himself if he wanted tocontinue life support.  When Bowers wasasked if he wanted this, he shook his head emphatically no. 

Although it’s rare forpatients to decide on the spot to be removed from life support, standardmedical ethics practice is to grant patients more autonomy, and courts haveupheld their rights to determine their own end-of-life care.

See Jeni O’Malley, Injured Indiana Hunter Chooses to End LifeSupport, Yahoo! News, Nov. 6, 2013.

Special thanks to Riley Branch (Texas Tech UniversitySchool of Law, 2014) for bringing this article to my attention.