Dax Cowart Case Summary

The case of Dax Cowart is about a 25 years old man, Dax Cowart, who was a severe burn victim. His father was burnt to death in the fire. Cowart suffered severe and disabling burns over most of his body. He loss of both his hands, right eye, and ears, and his left eyelid sewn shut. Also, he was dipped in a chlorinated bath to fight infection and having the bandages covering his body regularly stripped and replaced during the medical treatments.
Cowart insist that he wanted to die in the hospital. However, his doctors refused. Cowart was forcibly treated for 10 months although he kept begged his doctors to terminate his life and end treatment. Cowart was left to his own devices to handle pain because the effects of painkillers were not entirely

understood. Also, he was refusing medical treatment because he felt he would not be able to regain his former level of activity and living as a dead man. He tried to commit suicide by taking mass amount of sleeping pills several times and it was prevented each time. He asked a nurse and doctor to either give him medication that will kill him or do something that will help him end his own life. Additionally, he was deprived of his right to communicate in which may he let seek legal assistance at ending the treatments. The doctors used his mother's consent to override his wishes and declined his daily requests to abandon treatment. During Cowart’s rehabilitation process, he wished to die and continue to ask others to kill him. Cowart finally healed from the injuries and released from the hospital. But, he has never changed his mind that the doctor should let him die.
Patients have the right to autonomy and to decide for themselves what is best for their own lives and self-determination allowing a patient to decide his fate. Also, they deserve the right to control what happens to their bodies and have right to control over their treatment. In Right to Die, Ruth Chadwick states, “To be free to choose to die, when life has ceased to hold any attraction or meaning, might be supported on the basis of a respect for autonomy” (Chadwick, 627). Death can bring patients' the end of pain and suffering when there is no hope for relief, and they have a right to die. Death can prevent that patient keep harming himself by keep on living. Suicide is the only option, stop the feeling of dying.

For instance, some patients like Cowart may think that doctors may offer and what patients' want.
According to the Case of Dax Cowart, Cowart wants to end his own life is a judgment on his value of life. However, he is forcing doctors and nurses to make their talents and skills available to achieve his own private vision of the good life is wrong. In When Self-Determination Runs Amok, Daniel Callahan states, "Medicine should try to relieve human suffering, but only that suffering which is brought on by illness and dying as biological phenomena, not that suffering which comes from anguish or despair at the human condition." (Callahan,385). Medicine is used for cure disease, and it is not for satisfy patient’s personal desires or eliminate mental anguish. Medicine is also used to treat disease, prevent us from the disease and it is not used to make our life better.
Due to the duty of non-maleficence, doctors should use treatment to help the sick patient according to their ability and judgment, and doctors should never use it to injure the patient.
As Jack Kevorkian states in Years of Minutes: The Best of Rooney from 60 Minutes, “As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified” (Kevorkian, 329). Doctors must protect their patient from unnecessary injury or harm and avoid careless or unreasonable treatment. Also, doctors should never give a lethal drug to anyone if they were asked, nor they advise such a plan. Therefore, they should commit to saving the life of their patient. Besides, the doctors just simply continued to do what they had been taught to do their job and their job is to cure diseases but can’t alter fate and satisfy patient’s desire. It was not the doctors' decision to have Cowart in the hospital. Because they may consider the extent of his injuries, then they consider whether or not to keep him in the hospital. Additionally, when treating competent Patient like Cowart, the Doctors can find out that whether Cowart believe his life to be worth living, but Cowart could not use the claim of rights to demand that the doctors should end his life.
Patients should not let the doctor make the decision about terminate someone’s or their own life, and killing an innocent person is always wrong. Cowart should not give the total power of his life to the doctor and nurse. As John Finnis stated in Abortion and Health Care Ethics, “Every attempt to harm an innocent human person violates the principles of non-maleficence and justice, and is always wrong” (Finnis, 20). Killing or harming an innocent person that doing no harm to anyone is wrong because it may destroy their potential human life. In fact, Cowart is living his life means that the doctors are not entitled to end it in the interests of him. Killing or harming an innocent person causes unnecessary deaths event and stops the eventual emotional injury that would be given to families of the innocent person.
It is the duty of any person or society that where a person commits suicide, we should try to save that person lives as possible. This idea can prevent an even worse tragedy happen under the situation like Cowart is not really want to die, he just wants to raise attention and asking for help from others. Or, Cowart may suffer from mental problem that may have hindered his judgment. He may think that death can be thought of as if it were sleep or rest, and it can be emotionally engaging, especially as an escape from weariness and suffering. As a result, Cowart cannot tell doctors what he really wants, then the doctor ought to presume that they would be reasonable to be death and want what is good for them. At this point, if the doctors thought that Cowart thinks he has a meaningless life, then the doctors do him a favor by terminating it. A healthy person like Cowart would die from such decisions.
In another circumstance, Cowart's request has been fulfilled, and he has been allowed to leave the hospital, then he would die shortly and quickly.

Under this assumption, doctors still assisted suicide. However, Cowart's right of self-determination was rejected, and he survived. Moreover, life of a certain sort is better than nothing and not being desperately suffering can have even more value. At this point, doctors may think that they may saw treatment options and saving life is their job, even his injury is terrible, but not the end; therefore, they removed any chance that terminate his life. Cowart may think about is how hopeless his life is, how he can't go on living like this. the mentally felt that the pain is too great and no one understands the burdens he carries or the emotional turmoil he is experiencing. As Callahan states in When Self-Determination Runs Amok, “There is no objective way of measuring of judging the claims of patient that their suffering is unbearable” (Callahan, 382). No quality of life measures that accurately determined Cowart feel that life is not worth living and life is meaningless. And there is no way to measure that pain he is experiencing. By determining whether a life is worth living is vary for each one due to the possible disparity between the doctors' assessment and patient's own valuations of life. Thus, no one can really and deeply understand how he really

feel.
Further, doctors cannot allow to end that patient's life in the interests of the patients, but doctors can permit to deny patient the means to the death he might prefer given his evaluation of the quality of his life. The doctors may sympathize with him about his injury, but they did not provide any form of assisted suicide because that was a form of murder. In The Morality of Killing: A Traditional View, Germain Grisez and Joseph M. Boyle, Jr. state, “If one commits oneself to killing a person, one constitutes oneself a murderer”, “Thus every act which is an act of killing in the strict sense is immoral” (Germain Grisez and Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., 283). People who seeking the way to be killed by committing someone to killing themselves that is asking someone to be a murder. In addition, any form of killing to always wrong. To kill someone is to not respect the good of life because every act of killing in the strict sense is immoral. In fact, doctors should not have to make and agree with the decision that the patient makes since the patient loses his rights such as self-determination and well-being to how he conduct his own life when others are involved.