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Injured Indiana hunter chooses to end life support

Dragonfly

Dragonfly

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Injured Indiana hunter chooses to end life support

The Indiana man was enjoying that time while hunting for deer Saturday when he fell 16 feet from a tree and suffered a severe spinal injury that paralyzed him from the shoulders down. Doctors thought he might never breathe on his own again.Confronted with that prognosis, Bowers' family made an unusual request of doctors at Fort Wayne's Lutheran Hospital: Could Bowers be brought out of sedation and told of his condition so he could decide for himself whether he wanted to live or die?
The doctors said yes, and Bowers made his choice.
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Does anybody feel that the choices and decisions made in this case were morally, ethically, and/or spiritually wrong?


Would anybody here refuse to allow this man to make his own choices here?
 
Seems all took the Righteous path here.....I can see no wrong.
 
Dragonfly said:
Injured Indiana hunter chooses to end life support




Does anybody feel that the choices and decisions made in this case were morally, ethically, and/or spiritually wrong?


Would anybody here refuse to allow this man to make his own choices here?
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He made the best decision for him, IMO. Since the man was a hunter, he was probably physically active. To be paralyzed from the shoulders down for the rest of his life, unable to even feed himself, would be most men's worst nightmare! Since he was lucid enough to understand what his choices were, I believe his family did the right thing by allowing him to make his decision. He was a courageous man to spare his family having to make that decision!

Greetings, Dragonfly. :2wave:
 
Yeah, I'll chime in. The family was right to allow him to make the choice himself, and he was entitled to make the choice he did.
 
So doctor assisted suicide is no longer controversial?

It's a socially accepted practice?

No moral/ethical/spiritual issues or roadblocks any more?
 
Dragonfly said:
So doctor assisted suicide is no longer controversial?

It's a socially accepted practice?

No moral/ethical/spiritual issues or roadblocks any more?
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This isn't a case of doctor assisted suicide. This is simply taking someone off of life support. There's a big difference.
 
roughdraft274 said:
This isn't a case of doctor assisted suicide. This is simply taking someone off of life support. There's a big difference.
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He was not brain dead.
He was completely functional and rational from a mental capacity stand-point.
He made his own conscious choices about life and death.
He basically committed suicide with the help of his family and medical caregivers.


Believe me, I'm fully supportive of this man's choices.
I'm just wondering if everyone else is.
 
I have a brother in law that is paralized from the chest down with very limited use of his hands.
He was in a car accident and has not issue telling us he would rather died in that wreck.
He went from a guy that looked like a small body builder that did custom cabinets and construction to a wheel chair bound pissed off at the world person with no better out look.
His wife was pretty worthless and was not much help which didnt help.
Being that there is no hope for a better life, I dont see why he cant be granted his wish.
 
Dragonfly said:
He was not brain dead.
He was completely functional and rational from a mental capacity stand-point.
He made his own conscious choices about life and death.
He basically committed suicide with the help of his family and medical caregivers.


Believe me, I'm fully supportive of this man's choices.
I'm just wondering if everyone else is.
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not sure I would consider the lack of using an iron lung suicide.
 
Dragonfly said:
He was not brain dead.
He was completely functional and rational from a mental capacity stand-point.
He made his own conscious choices about life and death.
He basically committed suicide with the help of his family and medical caregivers.


Believe me, I'm fully supportive of this man's choices.
I'm just wondering if everyone else is.
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He couldn't even breathe on his own. That's life support. Not assisted suicide.
 
I'm fine with it. You should do what you want with yourself. You wanna end it? Who should stand in your way?

When it comes to assisted suicide (not this) I'm also in support of it, but this is not an example of that.
 
So in the other thread where the guy ate his dog because of unforeseen starvation, we berated him for not being prepared enough.

Are we going to apply the same standard to this guy? Why did he stupidly climb a tree and then fall out of it? Why didn't he have a safety harness or some kind of support rope? Why why why?

lol.... of course I don't actually care because I support wilderness explorers, even the ones who make mistakes.

As for his choice to die, I don't really blame him. The medical costs alone would bury his family, not to mention the resource burdens. He did the honorable thing.
 
Dragonfly said:
What's an "appropriate" length of time for something of this nature?
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Well, when "might never" became "definitely never" would be a good place, but when people have been sedated, they should not be allowed to make the decision when they are just coming off it. Even simple things in my area advise you to never make any legal decision whatsoever for the first 24 hours after having been sedated.
 
That was pretty soon after. But he was with friends and family and he was insistent the entire time, he had plenty of advocates to contest it, etc., so it doesn't smack of a problem. People make all sorts of choices with less deliberation than I do...doesn't mean we should have laws preventing them from doing so. I do agree it's you know...a big decision and has finality. But it's hard too because 2-3 weeks of living like that...he'd die suffering perhaps, and this way he never had to experience that.

Life's a tragedy either way, sounds like they gave him a good send off and he went out with his heart in the right place.
 
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