France: The European Court suspends the decision of the Council of State to cause the death of V. Lambert
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on June 24, 2014, urgently called for life-sustaining treatment for Vincent Lambert, a 39-year-old man who has been quadriplegic for six years as a result of a traffic accident. On that same day, however, the Council of State, the highest French administrative court, ruled in favor of his death. “Having noted the decision handed down by the Council of State,” the ECHR decided to ask the government “to suspend the execution of this decision during the proceedings before that Court,” as explained in a letter sent by the ECHR to the French government and released to Agence France-Presse on the evening of June 24 by one of the lawyers of the patient’s parents, Jean Paillot, Esq.
The European Court is thus obligating the medical staff to resume the feeding of Vincent Lambert in order to keep him alive. It also forbids his transfer from the University Hospital in Rheims where he was hospitalized. The website of Le Figaro explained on June 24 that Vincent Lambert’s parents fear that other family members—among them his wife—who are in favor of the patient’s death might move Vincent to Belgium, where euthanasia is legal.
The ECHR will now have to decide the case on its merits, which could take several months, or even years.
Earlier this year, on January 16, the administrative court of Châlons-en-Champagne had ruled however in favor of keeping Vincent Lambert alive, after the University Hospital in Rheims decided to stop feeding him for 31 days. The hospital and part of Vincent’s family had then appealed to the Council of State, which followed the opinion of the reporting judge dated June 20, 2014, that called for the cessation of “care”, deeming that the patient had been kept alive “artificially”, as the result of “therapeutic obstinacy”, according to the report cited by Le Figaro on June 20.
In a press release reprinted by the website of the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on June 24, the Vice President of the Council of State, Jean-Marc Sauvé, declared “that very special attention must be paid to the patient’s will.... It is clear from the facts of the case that Vincent Lambert, before his accident, had clearly and repeatedly expressed the desire not to be kept alive artificially” if he was in an extremely dependent state. For the Council of State, the cessation of treatment therefore corresponds to “his wish” and is “along the lines defined by the Leonetti Law”, which stipulates that “the patient’s desire to limit or to cease a treatment must be respected.” Now a video report published by reinformation.tv in March 2014 claims that there is no material proof, since Vincent Lambert never formulated such wishes in writing. The Council of State bases its decision solely on the testimony of Vincent’s wife, Rachel Lambert, who declared to the medical corps that her husband would have wanted euthanasia.
The Council of State also explains that it ruled on the basis of “independent” expert medical testimony that had concluded that the patient was in an “irreversible” vegetative state. During a filmed interview that was posted online on June 25 at the website reinformation.tv, Vincent Lambert’s mother radically contradicted that hypothesis. She says that before leaving for Paris to hear the decision of the Council of State, she and her husband went to visit their son and told him: “Dad and Mom are beside you.” Viviane Lambert (on the right in the picture) continued: “Vincent then turned his head toward us.... He is not a vegetable!” Professor of neurology Xavier Ducrocq (in the middle of the picture), one of the experts who examined the patient for the Council of State, confirms this also. On that same day, the neurologist from the University Hospital in Nancy declared that “the reporting judge left out part of the evidence... in particular concerning Vincent’s state. Vincent’s state has not deteriorated. I have been seeing Vincent for more than a year now, and Vincent is alive. He communicates—with difficulty, certainly. He has relearned to swallow and survived 31 days of being deprived of nourishment.... Are these not signs, if not of a will to live, then at least of a life? ... How could such a decision be made, which is not going to put an end to therapeutic obstinacy [heroic measures], which is not going to let him die, but is going to make him die?”
(Sources: reinformation.tv/lefigaro/nouvelobs/afp – DICI no. 298 dated July 4, 2014)
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