Quadriplegic: Death will be better

Press, 11 September 1989, Page 1

Quadriplegic: Death will be better

NZPA-AP Alabaster, Alabama A quadriplegic who won court permission to turn off his own life-support system said yesterday he knew that whatever happened after he did so would be better than life without a body. “Try to imagine being frozen, not being able to move anything, not even being able to breathe,” said Larry McAfee, aged 33, an engineer and avid outdoorsman before a 1985 motor-cycle accident severed his spine, paralysing him from the chin down. An Atlanta resident, Mr McAfee received permission on Wednesday from a Georgia judge to return home and turn off the

| CHRISTCHURCH

ventilator that has breathed for him and kept him alive since the accident Mr McAfee said he was not frightened, but wondered what would happen when he died. “I believe in God. I pray a lot I believe that whatever happens after death will be better,” he said. He met reporters for about 30 minutes at a nursing home where he had been for the last month. Mr McAfee sat strapped into a wheelchair with breathing tubes in his throat and mouth.

He would not say when he planned to turn off his life-support machine.

Mr McAfee said that in “some small way” he hoped publicity over his decision would help others in similar conditions. “I wasn’t aware of the problems involved in trying to obtain a court order like this — the problems and the time it took for me,” he said. He did not consider the decision to end his life to be suicide. “Suicide is an unnatural act Turning off a ventilator ... and letting nature take its course, to me that is not unnatural,” he said.

Mr McAfee said his family supported his decision.