Legalization on Death with Dignity Eyed
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The government is looking again at the legal issues surrounding euthanasia amid heated debate on whether the terminally ill should be allowed to die with dignity.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare is moving to adopt a form of ``limited euthanasia'' to allow the medical treatment keeping terminal cancer patients alive to be withdrawn at the last minute.
The death with dignity is different from the common concept of euthanasia or mercy killing. While euthanasia is widely classified as allowing the terminally ill to die instead of maintaining medical treatment to keep them alive, the death with dignity will be a move to let people die instead of trying to revive them in the event of emergency, and to permit the terminally ill to determine the time of their death.
The death with dignity would not require enforcing cardiopulmonary resuscitation or respiratory tubes at the minute of the patients' death, since extending their lives at that point could bring more pain and ``meaningless'' survival.
The current law bans doctors from any form of euthanasia. However, some doctors said that many patients cry out in pain and ask them to switch off the respiratory machines.
Some hospitals started getting ``Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)'' signed documents from patients to stop them being kept alive when they face death at last. But many families insist they continue keeping patients alive despite their knowledge that the patients do not want it, they said.
``Patients suffer the most,'' a Seoul official said, ``in some cases, those who have only 20 days of life left remain on life-support, feeling enormous pain, often in complete isolation from their families.''
There are rising criticisms that keeping people alive, no matter what, is against human rights. The law obliges all patients to be kept alive despite their wishes, which could be an infringement on human rights to make one's own decision, advocates say.
The Korean Federation of Medical Groups for Health Rights said banning death with dignity causes not only an individual's mental suffering but also socioeconomic costs.
After a series of seminars and hearings, the Korea Medical Association announced guidelines for applying death with dignity, but faced public criticism.
In the United States and Taiwan, death with dignity is allowed. Patients can sign a DNR or ``No Chest Cardiac Massage'' accord and can even decide the extent of treatment they want, through consultation with their doctors.
The Korean government has been carefully seeking the possibility of revising the law for quite a long time and formed a task force to deal with the matter last July.
Sources said the law will encourage the usage of hospice services, where patients can spend their remaining days in peace with trained staff and families instead of being stuck in sickbeds. Hospices do not force medical treatment when death is imminent, which could be referred to as allowing death with dignity, they said.
``It is definitely different from allowing euthanasia,'' the ministry spokesman said.
According to the government, only 7 percent of cancer patients died at hospice facilities while 76 percent died in hospitals in 2006.
However, the move is drawing criticism that it could provide loopholes to apply euthanasia itself, which is strictly banned here.
At the moment, one of the strongest opponents to the enactment is the religious circle. Some protestant Christians said they oppose the DNR and others for ``humans should not decide any kind of death.''
Last July, a group of doctors were sued by a deceased man's family for not conducting resuscitation under the man's DNR. The police initially concluded that the act was innocent, only to face harsh criticism.