연명치료중단의 허용성과 법제화에 대한 고찰

Legalization and Regulation of Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment

The criminal law gives rise to a duty to provide life-sustaining treatment in the terminal phase of an illness, even if the patient no longer wishes to receive such medical treatment. This duty is identified as the significant source of criminal responsibility for those involved in decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, so the Article 252 of the Korean Penal Code prescribes ‘murder upon request or with consent’. This article discusses whether this duty do not require the provision of treatment that is deemed to be futile. In the context of the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment debates, this article discusses arguments about the distinction between act and omission, on the one hand, and the relationship of those concepts to the distinction between causing death and letting die, on the other. Focused on the continuity of medical care process, it might be argued that the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment that was initiated is not the initiation of a new process, but the resumption of a process that was suspended when the treatment was initially implemented. In so arguing, this article points out that there is a conceptual distinction between the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and active euthanasia. Indeed, traditional medical ethics recognizes that the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment simply allows the patient to die, rather than causing the patient's death. Independent from the question of causation, the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is justified, as long as a duty to treat does not exist. In the absence of any duty to provide life-sustaining treatment, the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment does not cause death. This article examines where, in any event, should the line be drawn between the cases where a duty is held to exist and those where it is held not to.