However, I want you to concentrate not on the question of active euthanasia but on the more common situation where the decision is made to stop trying to save the person's life and the person then dies from natural causes. The question I want you to focus on in this paper is whether the doctor or the family should decide in cases of conflict and on what grounds. This is both a moral and a practical issue. You must accept that it is simply not feasible for doctors to always do all they can to save the patient's life, because a lot of the time they could keep the body functioning, but with no hope of recovery. Those people would fill up intensive care units and that care would not be available for people who could recover with such care.
Doctors try to look at the question in terms of current and future quality of life.
Families have widely varying values and may want to preserve their inheritance by avoiding expensive treatment or to continue futile treatment because they cannot bear the thought of loosing their loved one. Much as we would like to imagine that people should have the best medical care available irrespective of cost, the United States cannot afford to provide all possible care for everyone.