That is a danger for sure, but every single path we as a society here take can be exploited by people with ill intentions.
The pharma companies and hospitals have a financial incentive to keep people alive indefinitely, even despite horrible suffering.
The folks paying for the treatment (government, insurance, etc) have a financial incentive to terminate lives prematurely.
Family members with ill intentions may have various nefarious reasons to push for either outcome.
So the question with which we should begin is, "what is the right thing?" and build safeguards around that.
We cannot let "fear of corrupting influences" be the primary guiding principle here because every possible choice as a society here because there's a pretty strong financial incentive to corrupt these choices in either direction.
The concept of "natural death" is self-evidently ridiculous. We treat disease with the best technology possible, but then death has to be "natural."
That notion is at best a distasteful joke before we even get to the ambiguity of what a "natural death" even is, and at worst an evil attempt to define one particular sort of arbitrarily Church-sanctioned death.
What even is "natural death?" Being eaten by a bear? Starving to death because there was a drought and there were no berries for you and your hunter-gatherer buddies to eat? Dying from untreated cancer?
According to Catholic doctrine (to choose an extreme example) we have to keep permanently vegetative people alive indefinitely via feeding tubes and whatever other modern medical technology is required for as long as it takes. What single aspect of that could be described by a sane mind as "natural?"
The pharma companies and hospitals have a financial incentive to keep people alive indefinitely, even despite horrible suffering.
The folks paying for the treatment (government, insurance, etc) have a financial incentive to terminate lives prematurely.
Family members with ill intentions may have various nefarious reasons to push for either outcome.
So the question with which we should begin is, "what is the right thing?" and build safeguards around that.
We cannot let "fear of corrupting influences" be the primary guiding principle here because every possible choice as a society here because there's a pretty strong financial incentive to corrupt these choices in either direction.