Coma Patient Has Right to Die
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
A court made a landmark ruling Friday allowing for the ``death with dignity'' of a terminally ill patient in a vegetative state by stopping ``excessive'' treatment. This is the first ruling of its kind in Korea.
The Seoul Western District Court ordered feeding and ventilator tubes to be removed from the 76-year-old woman, Kim Ok-kyung, who's been in a coma since February, accepting her family's request to halt her treatment.
``The patient is in a hopeless state with no chance of recovery. And it's possible to assume that the patent would also want the treatment to end,'' said presiding Judge Kim Cheon-soo. ``Doctors from Seoul National University Hospital and Asan Medical Center have confirmed that she is expected to survive up to three or four months at best. In this condition, further treatment is meaningless.''
But the court stressed this decision should not be seen as a blanket approval for euthanasia, the more active form of assisted suicide, saying this was quite different from death with dignity.
``This ruling is confined only to those on whom medical treatment has no impact and who are presumed to want the treatment to stop,'' the judge said.
This is a dramatic turnaround from the previous ruling on a similar case. 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, although family members have raised practical reasons for assisted death.
In a court hearing early this month, a doctor who examined Kim testified, ``Her brain stopped operating except for small areas. Given her overall condition, she could be eligible to be confirmed as brain dead.''
Kim fell into a vegetative status in February due to excessive bleeding caused by a botched endoscopy procedure.
In October, The Korea Times exclusively visited the patient and interviewed Kim's daughter.
On the reasons for the petition, she said, ``My mother stressed that if she fell into a coma without any reasonable chance of a recovery, she would choose assisted suicide.''
She sometimes moves her eyes and toes and squirmes and wriggles, but doctors said they were just involuntary nervous reactions and were not indications of recovery, the daughter said. Shin Hyun-ho, who filed for the ruling, added only some marginal brain activities detected once a day were the sole barrier to confirming her as brain dead.
Considering the gravity of the case, the judges made a rare visit Oct. 1 to the Severance Hospital, Seoul, where Kim has been hospitalized, to check on the patient's condition and interview the physician in charge.
Medical circles hailed the verdict.
Choo Soo-ho, president of the Korean Medical Association, said, ``We have raised awareness of the necessity of death with dignity. But it should not be translated into support for euthanasia.''
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 of recovery,'' Father Park Jung-woo of the life ethics committee of the 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.''
Death with dignity for patients in a vegetative state is permitted in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Thailand, and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, but only when the patient has given consent.