Yes. Now what doctors need is an effective, compassionate way to communicate the simple fact that we need to let old people die. Here's one way:
A family brings an elderly patient suffering from stroke, diabetes, etc. into the ER. The patient is in a coma. Before asking them what they want to do, take the family into the NICU and tell them: we have limited resources, and we can either save a baby in here, giving him a chance for a healthy productive life, or we can perform heroic measures on your loved one, almost certainly doing nothing but prolonging his suffering. What is your choice?
Having recently been an advocate for an elderly patient with severe medical problems, I can say with confidence that this is a terrible idea twice over. Not only would it not work well, but it's also so lacking in compassion as to be horrific.
The time to educate people on these choices is years before you have to make them. The solution isn't to take people thrust into tragedy and threaten to kill babies if they don't do the "right" thing. It's to change our culture such that people consider these hard choices much earlier and life, and feel comfortable discussing these issues with their families.
What I'm trying to get at is that doctors need some sort of tools to help explain the situation to their patients and their patient's families. It doesn't have to be my suggestion, but some way of making the twin points that: a) prolonging life at any cost is not compassionate to the patient, and b) prolonging life at any cost is not compassionate to people who actually can be healed to go live a happy remainder of their life.
Families need to sit down and have an honest discussion about death before it's necessary. It's a hard conversation to have, but it can save constantly questioning and second guessing yourself what your loved one would want to happen.
A family brings an elderly patient suffering from stroke, diabetes, etc. into the ER. The patient is in a coma. Before asking them what they want to do, take the family into the NICU and tell them: we have limited resources, and we can either save a baby in here, giving him a chance for a healthy productive life, or we can perform heroic measures on your loved one, almost certainly doing nothing but prolonging his suffering. What is your choice?