Court approves mercy killing for first time in S. Korea By Kim Hyun

SEOUL, Nov. 28 (Yonhap) -- A court accepted a family's request on Friday to stop treatment for a woman lying in a vegetative state in an unprecedented ruling that approved mercy killing in South Korea without the patient's consent.

The Seoul Western District Court ordered feeding tube and life support be removed
from the 75-year-old woman, identified only by her surname Kim, saying she has no
chance of recovery and her desire to stop treatment can be inferred.
"Considering her hopeless state, the expected years left in her life and her
current age, it is assumed that Ms. Kim would have expressed her intent to die a
natural death with the life support removed rather than remain in her current
condition," Judge Kim Cheon-su said in the verdict.
The decision answered to a long-debated question here of whether authorities can
infringe upon the right to live of the terminally ill when their family demands
it.
In 1997, a court convicted a family of murder and a hospital of assisting in the
crime for removing a ventilator from a comatose patient. Physicians have since
shunned the practice while practical reasons for assisted death were raised by
patients' families.
Friday's ruling not only approved a mercy killing for the first time but also did
so without the patient's consent.
Mercy killings, also called "death with dignity," are permitted in some countries
like Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand and the U.S.
states of Oregon and Washington, but only when the patient had given consent.
In Kim's case, she had not said how she wanted to die. Considering medical
opinion that her chance of survival was virtually non-existent and the family's
testimony that she wouldn't have liked to be a burden to her children, the court
inferred her presumed intent to die.
Shin Hyun-ho, representing the family, said in a hearing, "No law has been
legislated about mercy killing, and there's no regulation in the public health
insurance law to prevent pointless life-extending treatment. Such circumstances
are a violation of one's constitutional right to happiness and right to
self-determination as a patient."
Kim's children had sought court approval for her physician-assisted death after
she sustained cerebral damage and fell into a coma while receiving a lung
examination in February.
The Severance Hospital had refused the family's demand to end her life. The
children filed a civil suit against the hospital in June.
The hospital has yet to decide whether to appeal or remove the life-extending
tubes from the patient as ordered, said its legal affairs official, Yoon
Jong-tae.
Medical circles hailed the verdict.
"Our position is death with dignity should be permitted in cases in which the
patient doesn't want to be a burden to his or her family and the family doesn't
want their beloved to continue suffering," Kim Joo-kyung, spokesman for the
Korean Medical Association of doctors, said.
The Catholic community, which opposes euthanasia, accepted the ruling as helping
one end life in a painless manner. The Vatican allows treatment to be withdrawn
for terminally ill patients who receive no therapeutic benefit from high-cost,
life-extending care.
"The most important thing is whether the patient has any chance to recover,"
Father Park Jung-woo of the life ethics committee of Catholic Archdiocese of
Seoul, said.
"Patients should receive the best care possible, but how one accepts death is
also important when there's no chance of recovery."