France: Court Rules on End-of-Life Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/world/europe/france-court-rules-on-end-of-life-case.html

Version 0 of 1.

France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, ruled Tuesday that a feeding tube could legally be removed from a 38-year-old man in a persistent vegetative state, whose care has been part of a long, bitter public fight involving the country’s end-of-life legislation. Before a 2008 accident left the man, Vincent Lambert, a former psychiatric nurse, paralyzed and unresponsive, he had repeatedly said he did not wish to be kept alive in such a condition, according to his wife and several family members, who have sought for him to be allowed to die. Given that, the court found that the feeding tube that has kept Mr. Lambert alive could be considered “unreasonable” medical “obstinacy,” and could be legally removed. Mr. Lambert’s parents, who oppose that, have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, and Mr. Lambert will be kept alive during the months or years of that court’s examination of the case. French law prohibits any medical acts explicitly intended to end a patient’s life, but authorizes doctors to withdraw treatment or administer lethal doses of painkillers under certain circumstances.