When my high school teacher assigned an essay on euthanasia, my class tried to be clever and wrote about “Youth in Asia.” The joke landed, but the topic stuck.
Euthanasia itself is no joke. It remains one of the most contested issues in law and medicine, built around a stark question: should people have the right to decide how and when their lives end, especially in the face of irreversible suffering?
In Hong Kong, the legal position is clear. Active euthanasia – deliberately ending a life – is illegal. What is sometimes [misleadingly] called “passive euthanasia,” meaning the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, is lawful and widely accepted.
Clinicians tend to avoid that label altogether. Withholding treatment is not euthanasia but an expression of patient autonomy. Under common law, a mentally competent patient can refuse treatment, even if that decision leads to death. This extends to Advance Medical Directives, or AMDs, now formalized under the Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance.
Set to take effect on July 31, 2026, the law allows individuals to make binding decisions in advance to refuse interventions such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR, or mechanical ventilation if they later lose capacity. This is not a dramatic departure from existing practice so much as a formalization of it. Advance directives and do-not-attempt-resuscitation arrangements have long existed in Hong Kong hospitals, but the new law brings coherence to existing practice, and provides greater legal clarity through a statutory framework, reducing uncertainty for both clinicians and families at emotionally difficult moments, and of course, protect clinicians from potential liability.
The broader significance lies in strengthening patient autonomy. Healthcare ethics have always prioritized informed consent and the right to refuse unwanted treatment. By embedding these principles in law, Hong Kong brings its system closer to international standards already seen in jurisdictions with mature palliative care frameworks.
Victor Dawes SC is the former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association
𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓
