[Right_to_die] Korean court's first time approval of life support disconnection

[World right-to-die news (nonprofit)]

The Korea Times reported 11 Feb 09:

Respirator Allowed to Be Removed From Comatose Grandmother

By Bae Ji-sook. Staff Reporter

A high court said Tuesday that the family of a comatose 73-year-old 
grandmother could have her feeding tube and respirator removed in a 
ruling that acknowledged a patient's right to ``die with dignity.''

The higher court upheld a lower court's ruling — the first of its kind — 
to get Yonsei Severance Hospital to remove Kim Ok-kyung, who has been in 
a coma since last February, from life support.

The ruling is in line with a statement from her family members that it 
was meaningless to prolong the life of the terminally ill woman through 
``excessive'' treatment, and was in accordance with her wishes.

Yonsei Hospital has 15 days to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, 
but has yet to make a decision on the matter.

Judge Lee In-bok said the court respected the patient's rights to make a 
decision about her life. He said since Kim has no chance of revival, her 
wishes should be respected.

Kim's family attorney Shin Hyun-ho said, ``Kim's skin tone has turned 
darker and her body is undergoing severe physical changes in every way. 
There is no point in treating her.''

The high court announced death with dignity could only be allowed ``when 
the patient was in a terminally ill phase in which no medical treatment 
was feasible; when maintaining life was nothing but a death-like 
situation for the patient; when the patient has talked about such 
methods at length with consistency and sanity; and when doctors are 
involved in the decision making.''

Lee, however, said he wants society to take such deaths prudently. ``I 
hope that people are not misled by the ruling and think euthanasia is 
possible. Patients' families who are in similar situations as Kim 
shouldn't abuse the case to pressure the ill person to take drastic 
decisions,'' he said.

Doctors welcomed the ruling. The Korean Medical Association stated that 
following a consensus between doctors, patients and family members, 
stopping ``meaningless treatment'' should be allowed.

``With the upper court, we will now need to legalize guidelines and 
other measures,'' spokesman Kim Ju-kyung said.

Religious groups were again divided over the ruling. In a previous 
interview with The Korea Times, Park Jung-woo, spokesman for the Life 
and Ethics Committee at the Archdiocese of Seoul of Catholic Church 
said, ``extending painful treatment just to extend time waiting for 
death is meaningless.''

Some conservative protestant Christians are against the ruling, 
regarding it as allowing a form of euthanasia.

Death with dignity is different from euthanasia, lawyers said, since the 
latter is an active way of stopping life by injecting lethal doses of 
medicines, while the former lets the patient die ``naturally without any 
artificial treatment.''

The government has also decided to subsidize hospice services to help 
patients prepare for death without ``meaningless and excessive'' treatment.