Helping someone die who made their wishes clear, I'm perfectly okay with. But assuming someone wants to die, I'm not.
Whether his father made it clear or not, I don't know. It just isn't in the post.
A number of these have been litigated (well at least arbitrated to my personal knowledge) in Calfornia and been found to protect the doctors and hospitals from pissed of relatives who wanted them to 'do more' so I pretty confident that they will be useful for my kids should I end up in that state.
What he does state is:
> I'd like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some dignity. But my government says I can't make that decision. Neither can his doctors.
He also points out early in the article that there are financial considerations:
> His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering.
> His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering."
Now you understand the reason for opposition to euthanasia. The purpose of government is to keep the rich, rich, and the poor, poor. Emptying his estate into the medical industrial complex is not an incidental side effect, but the sole purpose of its existence.
You want to see pet (dog/cat) vet assisted euthanasia made illegal? Implement pet health insurance. Try it and see.
re: "medical industrial complex"
Right now, some arguments against euthanasia center on the heirs bumping someone off early to keep their estate. We rarely hear the opposite view which you so cynically bring up - it's in the financial interest of many megacompanies that we continue the practice of prolonging life at all costs.
You have to ask yourself if there was a formal process with the list of outcomes and possibilities, how would you answer?