Family members of a comatose patient filed a petition last May claiming that the government infringed on her basic rights by neglecting to introduce a law allowing the discontinuation of artificial life support for terminally ill patients.

Eight out of the nine justices dismissed the claim.

"A terminal patient is entitled to the constitutional right to cease meaningless life support, but this does not obligate the state to legislate such individual laws," they said in their ruling.

The 77-year-old patient surnamed Kim fell into a coma last February after experiencing blood loss during a medical examination for lung cancer.

Her family members, after repeatedly requesting that the hospital let her die a natural death, filed a suit that resulted in the Supreme Court ruling in May acknowledge Kim's right not to undergo artificial life support.

The court, however, states that its ruling did not grant the right to euthanasia.

Kim was freed from her respirator in June and is still surviving on her own, despite doctors' expectations that she would die shortly after the removal.

Her family filed separate suits holding the Yonsei Severance Hospital responsible for letting her fall comatose due to medical negligence and for causing unnecessary damage by forcing the use of life support.

(tellme@heraldm.com)

By Bae Hyun-jung

2009.11.30