[Right_to_die] Right to die court ruling enforced by hospital

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

Agence France Presse reported 23 June 09:

S Korea hospital enforces 'right to die' ruling

SEOUL (AFP) — A South Korean hospital has removed a life-support system 
from a comatose patient, upholding a court ruling which had approved a 
euthanasia request for the first time in the country.

A spokesman for Seoul's Severance Hospital told AFP it removed a 
respirator from a 76-year-old woman mid-morning but it would take some 
time for the patient to be pronounced dead.

Hospital doctor Park Moo-Seok removed the respirator after her family 
said a brief prayer at the patient's bedside.

"Now I have mixed feelings," Park told Yonhap news agency. "But I hope 
she will rest peacefully in the bosom of God."

Last month the supreme court, upholding a lower court decision, 
supported a request by the woman's family that she be allowed to die 
with dignity.

Under current law the removal of a respirator from a brain-dead patient 
is officially regarded as murder. But the family had said extending life 
using medical devices would prolong the woman's "painful and 
meaningless" existence.

The woman was declared brain-dead in February last year after she 
sustained brain damage and fell into a coma while undergoing a lung 
examination at the hospital.

Three months later her children filed a court petition after the 
hospital rejected their request that she be allowed to die in peace and 
with dignity.

A court last November approved their request for removal of a life 
support system, saying she had no chance of recovery and her wish to die 
could be inferred.

An appeal court upheld that decision in February but the hospital took 
the case to the top court.

The supreme court in its May ruling said the termination of 
life-sustaining treatments required "careful judgement."

However treatment can be stopped, it said, by making a presumption about 
the wish of the patient. Maintaining a brain-dead state in a patient 
damaged "human dignity" when there was no chance of recovery.

In the current case, it said, the woman had told her family she did not 
want to be kept alive artificially if any problem arose with her 
hospital treatment.

Local religious communities have been split on the subject of 
euthanasia. Activists have warned against abuse of the ruling. Some 
Koreans still oppose mercy killing because of deep-rooted Confucianist 
beliefs.

The Korea Medical Association called for a new law to prevent abuse of 
the landmark ruling.

"From now we must work out new rules which are generally acceptable in 
our society," spokesman Choa Hun-Jong told reporters.

In 2007 a father was given a four-year suspended jail term for removing 
a respirator from his brain-dead son.