“The course of the procedure for stopping treatment will be continued from this day,” Vincent Lambert’s doctor announced to each of the family members on Tuesday.
Dr. Sanchez, Vincent Lambert’s doctor at the Reims University Hospital, announced the cessation of treatment on Tuesday. A controversial decision, repeatedly rejected, but supported by the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial court in France. The doctor appeals “to everyone’s responsibility” so that “the accompaniment of Mr. Vincent Lambert is as peaceful, intimate and personal as possible”, in an email consulted by AFP.
Viviane Lambert’s call for help at the UN
The question of the future of Vincent Lambert, quadriplegic since a road accident in 2008, divided the members of his family with on the one hand his parents, opposed to the cessation of treatment, and on the other his wife, some of his brothers and sisters as well as his nephew who wish his deliverance. Since Dr. Sanchez signed a medical decision qualifying the patient’s “continuation of care and treatment” as “unreasonable obstinacy”, his parents have continued to multiply appeals to have the procedure canceled.
His mother Viviane Lambert even appealed for help to the UN on Monday July 1, in Geneva: “without your intervention, my son Vincent Lambert will be euthanized by a doctor because of his cerebral handicap (…) He is in minimal state of consciousness, but he is not a vegetable”, she pleaded. The latter considers her son as severely handicapped and asks that he be transferred to a specialized centre, despite the confirmation by experts of his “irreversible chronic vegetative state”.
How will the cessation of care take place?
Quadriplegic for more than 10 years, Vincent Lambert cannot move, speak or swallow. He relies on artificial nutrition and hydration delivered to him through a tube. Without her, left to himself, he could not survive. It is therefore by gradually reducing the activity of the machines that the medical team will let him go.
“But what you have to keep in mind above all is that he will not suffer. Neither from stopping food, nor from stopping hydration”, explained an expert to the Huffington Postwhen stopping treatment. “The patient at the end of life does not die of hunger because he is not hungry, he does not die of thirst because he is not thirsty”, specifies in turn the head of the palliative care unit of an Ile-de-France hospital. As a precaution, the medical team should still administer a sedative. She will also continue to provide him with all the necessary hygiene care.
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