I believe that the doctor should be allowed to decide if the patient has reached the point of only getting worse and in considerable pain. In any of these situations a doctor should be at least an advisor, they are the ones with the medical knowledge, and know the present condition of the patient and the alternatives. "In any humane or humanistic view of what is good, it is morally wrong to compel hopelessly suffering or irreversible debilitated patients to stay alive when death is freely elected" (Larue, p. 61). In some cases, like terminal illness, "death is often better than dying", mainly due to the way that the person will die. They may have to go thorough a long period of pain and suffering. Ask yourself which you would rather choose, early or prolonged death (Larue, p. 62).
The advances of technology have disturbed the natural balance of life and death. When people are on life supporting machines, most of the time the machine is used to keep them breathing and their heart pumping. A person no longer dies when they are supposed to. Opponents say doctors should not play God by killing patients, but do they realize that by prolonging death, the medical profession is doing exactly that? Christian Barnard, at the World Euthanasia Conference, was quoted as saying, "I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today and stops the suffering of the patient" (Battin, p. 21). A different version of the same argument is doctors are not always responsible to do everything they can to save somebody. If a doctor's duty is to ease the pain of his patients, then why should this exclude the possibility of letting them die? What about a person who is in a vegetative state for a prolonged period of time with no hope of recovery, should the doctor do everything? I believe that a doctor should do what he can up to a point.