-1730888646.jpg "Kidney donation while alive: “It was an act of love that I did for my sister”")
The Council of State must decide for the second time on keeping Vincent Lambert alive. His nephew is asking for the collegial consultation process to be resumed.
The days go by and look alike in the Vincent Lambert affair. For the second time, the Council of State is called upon to position itself on the decision-making process for stopping care. This July 10, he will have to decide between the members of the family of this forty-something, in a vegetative state since 2008. Two requests will be examined simultaneously.
The two referrals concern the opinion of the Administrative Court of Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle), delivered on June 16, 2016. He orders the University Hospital of Reims (Marne) to resume the collegial procedure on the cessation of care which maintains Vincent Lambert alive. But this judgment has apparently gone unheeded.
The 40-year-old’s nephew therefore asks the Council of State to force the hand of the hospital establishment. In the hope that this time – the remedies being exhausted – the cessation of care will be effective. The parents of Vincent Lambert, opposed to such a measure, want to annul the verdict of the Administrative Court of Nancy.
A judicial soap opera
Changing the care team should do little to unravel this bag of knots. Dr Daniela Simon, who had taken over from Eric Kariger at Vincent Lambert’s bedside, left her post on 1er January 2017. This could call into question the entire procedure that had been initiated.
The Council of State will therefore have to decide on a major question: can justice force a doctor to make a medical and ethical decision, through the intermediary of the hospital establishment?
Without deciding on the subject, the Administrative Court of Nancy had given an orientation. On June 16, 2016, she ordered the Reims University Hospital to give caregivers the means to continue the collegial procedure. The process resumed at the beginning of July… before stopping abruptly less than 20 days later. The hospital felt that the conditions of serenity and security were not met. Nothing has changed since.
As a reminder, Vincent Lambert has been in a vegetative state since a traffic accident in 2008. His family is torn apart by the cessation of care which keeps him artificially alive. In 2014, the Council of State ruled that the decision to stop these was legal. But the resignation of Eric Kariger has revived a long series of legal remedies.
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