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Abstract This article builds on and develops the emerging bioethics literature on the �window of opportunity� for allowing death by withholding or withdrawing treatment. Our findings are drawn from in-depth interviews with 26 people (from 14 different families) with severely brain injured relatives. These interviews were specifically selected from a larger study on the basis of interviewees� reports that their relatives would not have wanted to be kept alive in their current condition (e.g. in vegetative or minimally conscious states). Our analysis tracks the decision-making processes that have led to the situation in which life-sustaining treatments continue to be delivered to these patients � maintaining them in a state that some families describe as a �fate worse than death�. We show how the medico-legal �window of opportunity� for allowing the patient to die structures family experience and fails to deliver optimal outcomes for patients. We end with some suggestions for change.
