cofty: Being alive and distressed is preferable to being dead.
I agree, if you were young enough to have years of life ahead of you. And after a discussion with the person they still picked me as the decision maker, I believe in what Simon said, it would be a round about way of getting the blood without it being their decision.
In the case of my elderly parent, since deceased at 98, it would be devastating and traumatic for her. As sweet and logical as she was in some things, there was that "judgement" mentality that crippled her thinking on others. **sigh**