Toy designer Mark Boudreaux has died after being left on a ventilator by a Cincinnati hospital for more than a year following his diagnosis with COVID.

“We lost Mark this morning,” his wife Judy said in a text sent to The Epoch Times on Mother’s Day (May 14).

Mark Boudreaux designed some of America’s most iconic toys—including Star Wars’ beloved Millenium Falcon space ship and the sail barge known well among fans as the Khettana.

For fun, he gave Storm Troopers, Endor Rebels, even an AT-ST driver from the iconic movie series, his own face.

The Cincinnati native also designed action figures for Marvel including Batman, and playsets based on the movies Transformers, Ghostbusters, and Jurassic Park.

As reported in previous stories by The Epoch Times, a long trail of medical and court records chronicles the 16 months battle as the Toy Hall of Famer fought to live and during which his devoted wife Judy waged her own galactic battle to save him.

Judy went from trying to get him weaned from the mechanical ventilator he was put on under COVID-19 protocols—to fighting to keep him on it after he suffered so much ventilator damage to his lungs that he couldn’t breathe without it.

When doctors declared the only way Mark would breathe on his own again was with a lung transplant, she called dozens of transplant centers around the United States, but none of them would even consider his case.

“No one would help us,” she told The Epoch Times.

Bethesda North, where Boudreaux was hospitalized since last February, has never responded to repeated inquiries from The Epoch Times about the case.

Its parent company TriHealth also never responded to repeated inquiries from The Epoch Times.

Following news of Boudreaux’s death, nationally recognized physician Dr. Pierre Kory, who got involved in Boudreaux’s case after The Epoch Times stories ran, said he has never seen a hospital so unwilling to help a patient.

According to Kory, when he lined up an FDA-approved treatment that has shown promising results for patients like Mark, the hospital refused to sign the forms to authorize it.

“No one there was willing to help him, to do anything for him,” said Kory, “it was basically a complete failure of the Hippocratic Oath.”

The hospital also sought a court order to take Boudreaux off a dialysis machine he was on after his kidneys were damaged from prolonged ventilation use.

Court records show the hospital argued that Boudreaux’s living will indicated he didn’t want his life artificially prolonged.

Boudreaux’s living will does say that, but it specifies he didn’t want his life sustained through an artificial feeding tube—which is what he was on during his entire hospitalization.

But as Judy pointed out to The Epoch Times, Mark’s living will said he only wanted an attending physician to have the power to withhold life-saving treatment if he was unable to make decisions regarding his medical treatment.

While bedridden and no longer able to talk, Boudreaux wrote several times on a piece of paper “I want to live.”

His living will also states he only wanted his life ended if he had an “incurable or irreversible condition.”

The treatment Kory had lined up for Boudreaux is a type of therapy containing stem cells and exosomes—a fatty sac found inside a cell that has properties that can locate and and reduce inflammation and promote healing.

The exosome and stem cell therapy has performed well enough to win approval from the FDA as an investigational new drug or what is known as an IND.

Kory said he and other medical practitioners have used it successfully to treat COVID patients and others suffering from substantial pulmonary distress.

“We started treating a few patients and our first patient within two days already showed significant benefits,” said Kory.

He also said the drug is easy to administer. It is done so intravenously and involves three doses over the course of a week.

It’s only drawback, says Kory, is that the therapy is not covered by insurance and it’s out of pocket cost is expensive. But that was not an issue for the Boudreauxs.

The problem, said Kory, is Mark’s treating physicians refused to sign off on what’s called a Compassion Use form required to administer an IND treatment.

Dr. Charles Thurston, a retired doctor and now a patient advocate, who also got involved in Boudreaux’s case, told The Epoch Times that when he found a long-term acute care facility in Missouri willing to take him, Bethesda North would not sign the release unless Judy Boudreaux, Mark’s legal guardian, agreed to a variety of conditions.

They included inoculating Mark with the COVID-19 vaccine, something Judy previously told The Epoch Times that both she and Mark were opposed to and that she constantly fought with the hospital over.

“I feel like they just really wanted him to die,” said Thurston.

Kory called Mark’s death a result of “pure arrogance” on the part of Mark’s treating physicians.

“Had he had a real doctor—and when I use the saying real doctor, I mean someone who puts the patient as the primary consideration, not the rules, not the protocols—and decides what’s the best thing that you can do for them on a risk benefit basis and follow that and do everything you can for the patient,” said Kory.

“But that’s not the doctors he had.”

Mark did, however, have his cheerleaders.

After learning of his situation, complete strangers started online petitions asking Bethesda North to “to seek every avenue possible” to save Mark.

A group of colleagues from Hasbro where Mark worked for more than four decades were working on a fundraiser for him.

Star Wars fans also paid homage to him on social media and on a variety of fan outlets including Jedi Temple Archives who headlined the sad news: “The Passing Of An Icon: Star Wars Designer Mark Boudreaux Is One With The Force.”