The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the cessation of treatment for Inès, a teenage girl in a vegetative coma since June in Nancy, complies with it. The parents, who refuse to authorize the cessation of care, had seized the Council of State, then the ECHR. A decision which now engages doctors.
The European Court of Human Rights declared “unanimously the application inadmissible. This decision is final ”. It is in these terms that the ECHR confirmed the decision to stop the care of a 14-year-old girl, in a vegetative coma since June 2018, but that the parents refuse to let die. The ECHR had been seized after the Council of State which had validated the same decision some time ago according to the procedure of the “summary liberty”, a procedure which allows the judge of the summary “to order any measure necessary for the safeguard of fundamental freedom ”. This decision comes in the wake of the decision of the Administrative Court of Nancy which, on December 7, had validated the opinion of the doctors, expressed in collegial procedure at the end of July 2017.
It is therefore now up to the doctors in charge of the child to assess whether, and within what period, the decision to stop treatment must be executed.
A hopeless coma
Inès suffers from a neuromuscular autoimmune disease. She has been hospitalized since June at the Nancy CHRU following a serious heart attack which caused a past coma or “vegetative coma”.
Despite intensive care, and with no improvement in her condition, doctors deemed her case hopeless. In accordance with the 2016 law on end of life, they launched a procedure aimed at stopping treatment.
The father and mother of the teenager had urgently seized (“in summary”) the highest administrative court to oppose the decision of the administrative court of Nancy, which had validated the proposal to stop medical care. For the parents, the court’s decision amounts to asking these doctors “to put her to death” … An understandable interpretation, but a little abrupt.
Apply the end-of-life decision
It is not, in fact, to bring about the end of the young girl’s life. Active euthanasia is prohibited in our country. It is about letting her die and therefore stopping supportive care. There is a very precise protocol, but it is difficult for a doctor to talk about a medical act, even if it should.
Giving death is the reverse of a doctor’s mission. We see the dilemma. However, one should not be naive either… It is for generations that doctors have shortened – often in great solitude – the suffering of patients for whom there is no longer any hope, except to prolong the suffering. unnecessary.
An end-of-life protocol
There is, in the case of these deep comas, an “end of life” protocol, which consists of stopping food and hydration, and giving anesthetic drugs. It is true that this can be interpreted as “dying of thirst and hunger”, but it is not.
We have two certainties. The first is that the brain only works automatically, without consciousness. The second is that if we had the slightest doubt that the patient could feel pain, the anesthetic drugs used jointly would not. leave no room for suffering, both moral and physical.
Today, products are used a million times more powerful than morphine. This leaves little room for suffering. Except that of the parents.
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