By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The Supreme Court will make a final decision of whether or not to remove life-extending equipment from a comatose 77-year-old grandmother, whose children filed the first ever lawsuit against a hospital to stop what they call ``meaningless treatment'' to a patient with no chance of revival.
A provincial court last year allowed the removal of life support, saying the ``meaningless'' extension of life was against the patient's right to die with dignity. An appellate court upheld the decision on Feb. 10.
The Severance Hospital said Tuesday it had decided to appeal the case to the top court.
``Given the case's impact, 10 medical staffers had a four-hour-long discussion about the issue and reached a consensus to appeal the case,'' a hospital officer said. They had the first round of talks last week but failed to make a decision.
``The decision is basically to warn against the prevailing social atmosphere that takes life too lightly'' the hospital said in a statement. ``We also consider the dignity of human life based on the belief in Christianity, the doctor's duty of taking care of a patent until one's death, and the patient's overall heath.''
The hospital's president, Park Chang-il, said, ``The patient in a vegetative state has maintained her life using life-supporting equipment. She shows stable vital signs. But once the equipment removed, she will die within hours.''
Park said he was aware of the necessity of introducing what people call ``passive euthanasia'' for practical reasons, but added ``life is not something to be taken for such reasons.''
The patient, Kim Ok-kyung, lapsed into coma in February last year due to bleeding caused by a botched endoscopy procedure. In the first ruling in last November, the Seoul Western District Court ordered feeding and ventilating tubes to be removed from the patient, accepting her children's claim that their mother had always opposed keeping people alive on machines when there was no chance of revival.
An appellate court also upheld the previous decision, setting unprecedented guidelines for death with dignity. It said the death with dignity could 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.''
pss@koreatimes.co.kr
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