[Serious] Total locked in syndrome and assisted dying

[Duty]

I've just signed up for a direct debit donation mandate to Dignity in Dying, who advocate for widespread/ubiquitous "living wills" as well as assisted suicide, which has at least made me feel a little less powerless on these issues. Some stats from the Advance Healthcare Directive (living wills) wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare_directive

Perhaps unsurprisingly it appears to be largely the religious "pro life" and "don't play God" brigade who are hampering empathetic, humane progress in the euthanasia and living wills areas. Religion strikes again. As this is a largely USA board I'll just pull in these quotes here too:

Aggressive medical intervention leaves nearly two million Americans confined to nursing homes,[77] and over 1.4 million Americans remain so medically frail as to survive only through the use of feeding tubes.[78] Of U.S. deaths, about a third occur in health care facilities.[79] As many as 30,000 persons are kept alive in comatose and permanently vegetative states.[78][80]

On July 28, 2009, Barack Obama became the first United States President to announce publicly that he had a living will, and to encourage others to do the same. He told an AARP town meeting, "So I actually think it's a good idea to have a living will. I'd encourage everybody to get one. I have one; Michelle has one. And we hope we don't have to use it for a long time, but I think it's something that is sensible."[88] The announcement followed controversy surrounding proposed health care legislation that included language that would permit the payment of doctors under Medicare to counsel patients regarding living wills, sometimes referred to as the "infamous" page 425.[89] Shortly afterwards, bioethicist  issued a call to make living wills mandatory