QUESTION 5

Consider the following case:Dax Cowart and his father, Ray, were ready to drive home on July 25, 1973, after inspecting some land that Ray had hoped to buy in East Texas, but their car would not start.

Dax tried the ignition again, and again, hoping to coax the engine to life. His father got out and opened the hood. All the while, they were unaware that a propane pipeline ran beneath the dry riverbed where they had parked, and that it was leaking.

When the engine finally sparked, the propane exploded, engulfing both men and the surrounding area in flames. Ray Cowart collapsed, and Dax pulled himself out of the car and ran for help, sprinting almost a half-mile through walls of fire before encountering a farmer and the farmer's nephew, who ran to call ambulances.

Dax, in agony from the burns covering most of his body, had a request for the farmer.

"I asked him to bring me a gun, and he wanted to know why," Mr. Cowart later told an interviewer. "I told him, 'Can't you see I'm a dead man? I'm going to die anyway; I've got to put myself out of this misery.' He said, in a very caring way, 'I can't do that.'' It was the first of many times that Mr. Cowart, who was 25 then, would beg to be allowed to die.

His father died in an ambulance, and Dax was taken to a burn ward at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and later to one in Galveston, where doctors tried to save him with often excruciating treatments.

Mr. Cowart, however, had instructed doctors, nurses and anyone else who would listen that he did not want to be treated for his injuries. He simply wanted to die.

His doctors ignored his wishes, and Mr. Cowart survived, severely disfigured and disabled. But their refusal set him on a course to which he would devote his life.

He became a lawyer and a prominent patients'-rights advocate. In the face of what he saw as medical paternalism, he argued that patients should have more autonomy over what treatments they receive and a choice in whether they even receive any treatment at all.

Based on your knowledge of ethics, explain whether a person in the same situation as Daxshould have the right to refuse treatment and die. Distinguish the legal question from the moral question. State and defend your view.