PARIS — A 42-year-old Frenchman who has spent more than a decade in a vegetative state was taken off life support on Monday after years of court disputes that divided the man’s family and put him at the center of a right-to-die debate in France.
On Monday, doctors at a hospital in the northeastern city of Reims stopped artificially feeding and hydrating the man, Vincent Lambert, and began administering strong doses of sedation. Mr. Lambert, a nurse, was left in a vegetative state after a motor vehicle accident in 2008.
While euthanasia is illegal in France, the law allows for what has been called “passive euthanasia,” in which terminally ill or injured patients with no chances of recovery are taken off life support and put into heavy sedation until their death, after extensive consultation with their families and medical staff.
The decision to remove Mr. Lambert from life support was announced this month after a series of rulings, despite staunch opposition from his parents. Mr. Lambert’s wife, Rachel Lambert, has maintained that her husband had verbally expressed that he did not want to be kept alive in a vegetative state.
The dispute has attracted intense attention from the media and from politicians, some of whom had asked President Emmanuel Macron to stop the life support from being removed. Mr. Lambert’s parents had also asked that he intervene.
But Mr. Macron said in a Facebook message on Monday that while he had been “deeply moved” by Mr. Lambert’s situation, and that there were no “simple or unequivocal” answers to end-of-life questions, it was not his role “to suspend a decision that is up to the assessment of doctors and that is in conformity with our laws.”
A vegetative state can be defined as a condition that occurs when the part of the brain that controls thought and behavior no longer works, but vital functions such as the sleep cycle, body temperature control and breathing persist. People in a vegetative state can sometimes open their eyes and have basic reflexes, but they do not have a meaningful response to stimulation or display any sign of experiencing emotions.
Because Mr. Lambert did not leave written instructions about his end-of-life wishes, disagreements over his current state and what he would have wanted are at the heart of his family’s divisions.
Mr. Lambert’s parents and their supporters argue that because he is not terminally ill, he a disabled person who does not fall under the purview of France’s legislation regarding end-of-life situations.
“It’s a crime, that’s all,” Viviane Lambert, Mr. Lambert’s mother, told reporters outside the hospital in Reims on Monday, after her son’s life support was halted. “I’m ashamed for France.”
On several occasions, including on Monday, Mr. Lambert’s parents have released videos of him in attempts to show that he still reacts to stimulation.
But Mr. Lambert’s wife, who was made his legal guardian in 2016, says that he had clearly stated that he did not want to live that way. Ms. Lambert and her supporters point to multiple medical assessments that found her husband to be in an irreversible vegetative state, and to court rulings that said that artificially feeding and hydrating him to keep him alive constituted “unreasonable obstinacy” as defined by French law.
“To see him leave is to see him as a free man,” Ms. Lambert told RTL radio on Monday.
French doctors are also divided about the case. The French Society for Palliative Care said in a statement on Monday that Mr. Lambert was in “a situation of artificial prolongation of life, as a result of medical action,” and that taking him off life support was justified.
Others disagreed. In a joint opinion column published on Monday in the newspaper Le Monde, dozens of French medical professionals said that Mr. Lambert’s condition had been stable for years and that gauging his state of consciousness was too complex to reach an undoubtable conclusion.
“To decide in the place of people who cannot express themselves, to judge that their life is not dignified or ‘has no meaning,’ is neither ethical nor scientifically justifiable,” they wrote.
Dr. Régis Aubry, the head of palliative care at the Besançon hospital and a member of a governmental advisory body on bioethics issues, said there were about 1,500 to 1,700 people in France in a state similar to Mr. Lambert’s, but that requests to cease artificial hydration and nutrition were rare, and that in a majority of cases families and doctors came to an agreement on end-of-life decisions.
What made Mr. Lambert’s case stand out, he said, was the level of disagreement between family members, and the intense media scrutiny that followed.
“Modesty should be paramount when handling these questions,” he said, noting that much is still unknown about the consciousness of vegetative patients, and that legislation could never cover each and every individual case. “Only a discussion between respectful people can lead to the answer that is less bad.”
Lawyers for Mr. Lambert’s parents said they would mount new legal challenges to reinstate Mr. Lambert’s life support, but it was unclear whether that move would prove successful, as several courts have already approved the procedure.
Medical experts predicted it would take at least several days for Mr. Lambert to die once life support was removed.
Doctors, in consultation with Mr. Lambert’s wife, first decided to take him off life support in 2013, after years of physical therapy and care failed to improve his condition. But Mr. Lambert’s parents, both devout Roman Catholics, opposed the decision and obtained a court ruling that reversed it.
Years of legal battles followed. The Council of State, the highest administrative court in France, and the European Court of Human Rights, both ruled last month that Mr. Lambert could be taken off life support. On Monday, the European court rejected a request by members of Mr. Lambert’s family to reinstate life support, citing the absence of “new evidence” in the case.
Mr. Lambert’s parents have also referred their son’s case to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a United Nations-affiliated body. The committee called on France to delay the decision to halt Mr. Lambert’s life support while it investigated. But Agnès Buzyn, the French health minister, has said that the committee’s decisions are not binding and that all legal appeals have been exhausted.
Mr. Lambert’s case has also become increasingly politicized in recent weeks. Some politicians, like the former Socialist presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, called for the legalization of assisted suicide.
Others, particularly those on the right, criticized the decision to halt Mr. Lambert’s life support. The National Gathering, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen that was formerly known as the National Front, said in a statement that the decision “opened the way for the most dangerous and most worrying abuses.”
Mr. Lambert’s case is reminiscent of other high profile disputes over a person’s right to live or die. The family of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state before her feeding tube was removed in 2005, were similarly divided. Her case went on to stoke debate in the United States and beyond.
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