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

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