FRANCE
The European Court of Human Rights asked to keep Vincent Lambert alive
The case has cast a dark shadow of impotence and pain over France. After a two-year-long complex legal process, the 17 judges of the State Council – the highest Court of the French judicial administration – have decided to interrupt artificial hydration and nutrition to Vincent Lambert. France thus seemed to open its door to euthanasia. But on June 24 the European Court of Human Rights urgently asked to keep Vincent Lambert alive. His parents filed a request to the European Court in Strasbourg. In a letter to the French government, transmitted to the agency France Press by the lawyers of the patient’s parents, the Court asked France to “temporarily” postpone the interruption of nutrition and hydration to give time to the Court to examine the case. “Serious and irreversible lesions”. The 39-year-old man has been in a vegetative state for the past six. In 2008 he was the victim of a car accident, which left him quadriplegic. Since then he lies in a so-called “minimum consciousness” state at the Hospital of Reims. His condition is described as irreversible in medical reports. On his case his family is unfortunately divided. Vincent’s wife, Rachel Lambert, along with the patient’s siblings, is in favor of interrupting nutrition an hydration… But Vincent’s parents have always fought not to suspend treatment. Last January 28 Lambert’s wife filed a petition at the Council of State. Judges ruled that “the patient is affected by serious and irreversible lesions” and considered that on several occasions before the accident Vincent Lambert said he would not want to be artificially kept alive if he fell into a state of severe dependence”. The voice of the families. The Lambert case sparked off a trail of polemics in France with heavy concerns for the future. The Cranial Traumas and Cerebral Palsy Patients’ Families Associations (UNAFTC) voiced their cry of alarm. They fear that the Lambert case could impact the destiny of 1700 patients who are in his same situation in France. The president of the Union Emeric Guillermou pointed out that “people in chronic vegetative state are not dying. They are people with serious disabilities, in a situation of extreme dependency, lack of conventional means of communication”. With regard to artificial nutrition and hydration, families believe that “the degree of consciousness alone is not enough to justify the implementation a procedure to stop treatment”. Surviving and living. Personal experiences are touching and diverse, but there’s a thread that unites them: at a certain point in the life of an entire family the news breaks out that a family member was involved in an accident. A phone call, a notification of a law enforcement officer makes them fall into an abyss of pain. “One evening the phone rings – said Francoise Angles – ‘Your son had an accident. He’s in the hospital in a very serious condition. Yes, he’s in a coma. No, the doctors can’t say anything, you have to wait”. Follow the days, months, often years, and with time anger, regrets and loneliness keep mounting. The situation is hard to accept … “But you have to continue to live – added Francoise – although not as before: we will never be the same again: we are wounded in our souls, in our hearts, in the stomach. But we must continue to build what we can, especially to earn a place as a man among you”. Can a person be sentenced to death? The Lambert case is not closed; not by a court ruling. The matter is the object of widespread debate in France today. Catholic families associations (AFC) asked: “Can justice sentence a person to death?” Jean Marie Le Méné, president of the lay Foundation “Jerome-Lajeune”, pointed out that Lambert “is not dying: he lives in a way in which his disability enables him to, a limited life but a life”, and added that interrupting Vincent’s nutrition and hydration means “to make him die of hunger and thirst”. On “Le Figaro”, philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj, noted that this debate reveals the tendency of our society to reject weakness and dependence. In the past, people’s lives were taken away without a second thought; today it is done in the name of “compassion.” And remembering the words of Georges Bernanos, he concluded: “Men of our times have a hardened heart and a sensitive stomach”.
