>The Liverpool Care "Death" Pathway is being phased out, the NHS is under scrutiny for a culture which leads to mistreatment in the care of people with disabilities.
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>The British High Court has decided to let hospitals (with judges consent, aka CYA) decide who lives and dies regardless of the family's wishes.
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>http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_MED_BRITAIN_WITHHOLDING_TREATMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-30-07-25-07
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>Britain's highest court has ruled in favor of a hospital that gained court approval to withhold treatment from a terminally ill man despite the family's opposition.
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>What a lovely culture the west is reverting to.

For my taste too much info missing to decide how I would have decided:
- doctor/hospital should be allowed to refuse treatment, as long as they provide a chance to transfer elsewhere.
- ICU might have been neded by other patients with chances the doctors considered better.
- who was supposed to pay ? No money, no service sounds harsh, but are you willing to burden taxpayers with unlimited medical cost ?

sounds like story was put there to evoke such discussions based on sparse or insufficient info.
Going against family wishes as the patient could to make his own wishes known is a point, but might be a point superseeded by one of the above.