Care for the dying

Most of the daily papers are carrying articles on the inadequacies of care of the dying within the NHS - click here.
We need a proper debate on what medical research is necessary/feasible and desirable. Every different group; prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, liver disease, heart. lung etc etc is busy researching away on methods and drugs that will eradicate the disease and/or mitigate the effects of the problem. These all cost ever increasing amounts of money. Are we prepared to write an open ended cheque? Currently we seem to want to prolong life so that people can get dementia and then have euthanasia to polish us off. Perhaps we should focus ore on quality of life rather than prolonging life. We need a reasoned debate on these issues but as politicians will be involved this looks very unlikely.