Doctor charged with murder for removing respirator from 88-year-old woman
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 07:44 EDT
WAKAYAMA — Police on Tuesday filed an investigation report with prosecutors on a physician who is suspected of murdering an 88-year-old brain-dead woman by allegedly removing her artificial respirator last year.
Investigations show the doctor at Wakayama Medical University's Kihoku Hospital in Wakayama Prefecture, who is in his 50s and also worked as an assistant professor at the university run by the prefectural government, performed an emergency operation on the woman who was taken to the hospital after developing bleeding in the brain on Feb 27, 2006. The patient, who fell into a state of brain death after the operation, died shortly after the doctor accepted on the following day repeated requests from her relatives to remove the artificial respirator, the sources said.
From Japan Today
I am trying to figure out who benefits from this situation. My only guess is that prosecutors are not very busy in Wakayama recently (no body parts washing ashore).
