In an order issued Thursday, the court of Châlons-en-Champagne opposed an end of inadmissibility to the will of the doctors of the CHU of Reims to suspend the feeding and the hydration of Vincent Lambert. The patient in a state of minimal consciousness since a motorcycle accident in 2008 will therefore remain alive, suspended from the care provided for 5 years by the palliative medicine department of the University Hospital of Reims.
Without dwelling on the application of the Leonetti law relating to the rights of patients at the end of life, the judges ordered the end of life process decided by the hospital to be stopped, considering that Vincent Lambert is “neither ill or at the end of life “. For the court, “the continuation of the treatment was neither useless nor disproportionate and did not aim only the artificial maintenance of the life. (…) The signs of his will to die could not be determined with a sufficient degree of certainty (and have been) over-interpreted “by physicians.
If the court’s decision is in line with the wishes of Vincent Lambert’s parents, it is greeted with disappointment by the patient’s wife and the medical profession. The Reims University Hospital now has 15 days to seize the Council of State.
This judgment comes a few days after the wish of the Head of State to change the law on the end of life.
