I find it hard to believe as well, but some years back, a similar thing happened to a relative of mine. She had just one child — quite the fool, that child — to make the medical decisions. The fool did what the doctors suggested and the parent died slow and horrible.
You may wonder how the Germans could have done nothing, or how they could have actively assisted in the Holocaust.
We have among us people who would sit there watching their own parents die in the most inhumane manner. Ostensibly because some judge permitted it, and some medical practitioner swore it was painless.
I would take my parent home if it were a felony to do so and the home a fishing shack.
This was before abortion was in full force. Our patients were the most pitiful bits of helpless humanity imaginable. Some, into their 'teens, were no larger than babies.
Because every ward was a "hospital" ward, they didn't come to ICU until they were terminally ill. Every patient was treated with compassion and mercy as if they were our own babies. The doctors hovered over them like mother hens. No one ever was denied fluids or nurishment until they passed.
This mercinary attitude towards dying family members is unspeakably evil. That medical people have come to be so unmerciful is wicked beyond words.
Be careful about signing away your rights to be treated mercifully until you've spent a few days without food and water. With morphine, thirst becomes intensified. Think about yourself in that bed, no longer allowed to speak for yourself.
In the end, this attitude makes us all a little less human. There are incredibly rich and wonderful life lessons to be gained by being the caregiver to someone you love in their greatest extremity.