The crazy day of the Vincent Lambert affair… While the French Council of State came at 4 p.m. to decide for a “discontinuation of treatment” of the quadriplegic patient in a vegetative state for six years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), seized urgently at the beginning of the day by the parents of the 39-year-old man, asked the government at 10 pm ” to suspend the execution of this judgment for the duration of the proceedings before the Court “, specifies a letter sent by the ECHR to the French government.
But the story is not over. If the judgment of the Council of State were to be suspended, the second phase, that of the study of the file on the merits by the European Court, would risk being much longer. The deadlines can indeed go from six months to three years, but the Court specifies that it decided “that the request would be treated in priority”.
“One more relentlessness”
Victim of a road accident, Vincent Lambert, a 39-year-old psychiatric nurse, has been hospitalized in a chronic vegetative state for six years. The family is torn apart, at the heart of a debate around euthanasia, the application of the Leonetti law and a family drama.
On the one hand, his parents, Pierre and Viviane, traditionalist Catholics, want their child to be kept alive. On the other, his wife Rachel Lambert, his nephew and the medical profession who want the care, food and hydration of this man to be stopped “because of the irreversible nature of the lesions and considering that this respects his wills “and for the application of the Leonetti 2005 law, on the end of life. This law effectively authorizes the stopping of too heavy medical treatment at the request of the patient in order to avoid any harsh treatment.
Vincent’s parents, relieved by the decision of the ECHR, are convinced that he is disabled but not suffering from an incurable disease. They fiercely oppose the application of the Leonetti law despite the wishes of their son: “he had also clearly indicated before his accident that he did not want therapeutic treatment” according to his sister, Marie Lambert. François Lambert, the patient’s nephew, regrets him “one more relentlessness for a body that cannot take it any longer”.