The judges must decide for or against the continuation of care for Marwa, a baby in a coma. They heard the irreconcilable arguments of parents and the medical profession.
In November 2016, doctors at La Timone hospital (Marseille) decided, after a long procedure, to stop treatment and disconnect the breathing apparatus that was holding a one-year-old girl who suffered irreversible damage. But Marwa’s parents are asking the doctors to continue the treatment.
The judges, who must decide for or against the continuation of care, heard this Monday the irreconcilable arguments of the two parties, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
Doctors requisitioned
“We must give him the chance to live”, declared before the administrative court of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) the father of the girl, Mohamed Bouchenafa, originally from Nice. “When I look at her, you see that she wants to live. It is not a child who wants to leave, ”he continued in the absence of his lawyer, Me Samia Maktouf.
“In the legal field, you will have no other choice” than to validate the cessation of care, “in the presence of irreversible lesions and unreasonable obstinacy of the parents”, immediately retorted the lawyer for the Public Assistance – Hospitals of Marseille (AP-HM), Me Olivier Grimaldi.
In comments reported by AFP, he added: “if this is not the case, it will be a human decision that the AP-HM will understand”, stressing however that it would then be necessary to “requisition” the doctors whose “the oath and the proper and personal ethics” are opposed to performing new medical procedures for this little girl.
An unresolved ethical dilemma
As a reminder, the parents, who share their fight on Facebook, had seized administrative justice in summary proceedings, and the judges had ordered an expert report on his condition, before deciding. At the beginning of January, the expertise concluded with “irreversible sequelae” and a “major handicap” but did not settle the “ethical dilemma” of the continuation of treatment. They warned of the difficulty of assessing the pain felt by the baby if he was kept alive.
This Monday, the court therefore heard the two parties again, and reserved its judgment. Me Olivier Grimaldi however indicated that in the Claeys–Leonetti law on the end of life, “in no case the consent of the parents is required”, concluding that “the information and the accompaniment of the family”, whose baby was admitted on September 25, suffering from a virus lightning, had been carried out in the rules by the Timone hospital. Now it’s up to the judges to form their own opinion…
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