The Hindu : Mercy or murder?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2003

Opinion

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Mercy or murder?

By Vaiju Naravane

In France the medical profession has been calling for some legal framework for the widely practised act of euthanasia.

THE MERCY killing of a 22-year-old quadriplegic by his mother has sparked off a nationwide debate in France about euthanasia and whether terminally ill persons should be legally allowed to seek assistance to die. Administering an illegal substance or otherwise participating in an act that brings about a patient's death, even at his or her request, is a crime tantamount to premeditated murder in the country. The death of Vincent Humbert, a paralysed former fireman, at the hands of his mother has put the spotlight on a subject the French have always shied away from.

Vincent was just 19 when a road accident left him in a deep coma. His mother, Marie Humbert, left her job, moved close to the hospital in Brittany where he had been shifted and spent close to two years nursing her son. He emerged from the coma dumb, blind and quadriplegic. When doctors ruled out the possibility of further progress, the young man expressed a wish to die.

He wrote to the highest authorities in France, from the President, Jacques Chirac, downwards to judges, lawmakers, doctors and human rights activists. Last month, just a day before the third anniversary of his accident, he published a book chronicling his suffering and made an impassioned plea for the right to die with dignity. He wrote the book from his hospital bed, communicating his thoughts to a scribe by laboriously putting pressure on his wrist.

His mother then injected a massive dose of sedatives into his intravenous drip that plunged the young man back into a coma. Three days later he died. She was arrested but it is unlikely she will be charged.

In a dramatic turnaround, the doctor attending to Vincent said it was he who finally turned off the artificial respirator. Technically speaking, he said, he was responsible for the young man's death. Doctors in France commit such acts daily, the physician said. It was time to shed hypocrisy and face reality, time to open a public debate.

Over 600 people turned up in the tiny town of Berck-Plage for the young man's funeral. His father, Francis, addressed the crowd of family, friends and well-wishers at the church, reading aloud from a farewell message Vincent wrote just before his death last Friday. "I would ardently wish that my departure is not one of suffering. I would want my family to think of me as someone who loved them very much and for them to accept my passing as something very simple and very natural," the message said.

Vincent's case has generated nationwide debate. His mother was briefly taken into custody for attempted murder but since then has been treated lightly by authorities. She has been put into psychiatric care at her request, but was at the funeral, where she remained silent.

France has so far stubbornly refused to face the troubling issue of euthanasia. Holland and Belgium have both passed laws legalising mercy killing for terminally ill patients. But the assisted suicide has to be carried out in strictly controlled circumstances. After Vincent's death, the Prime Minister, Jean Pierre Raffarin, ruled out the possibility of legislation in the matter saying questions of life and death fell beyond the purview of parliamentarians. But the overwhelming response to Vincent's death made him backtrack. There will now be a parliamentary report on the subject.

In Holland, doctors can become party to medically assisted suicide if they deem the patient's request voluntary and lasting and if in consultation with other doctors they conclude that the patient's suffering is unbearable with no cure in sight. Belgium too has adopted similar laws. Both countries have been sharply criticised by the Vatican and by pro-life lobbies.

In France, the medical profession has been calling for some legal framework for a widely practised act . Doctors regularly take patients off respirators or give lethal injections in cases of irreversible brain damage or suffering with no end in sight. There is fear, however, that greedy relatives and unscrupulous doctors could collude to expedite deaths in order to lay hands on their property.

"Euthanasia is a subject that fills the French with dread, a subject they do not wish to confront," says publisher Olivier Bétourné. "Last year we published a book on the subject by a writer, Francois de Closets, who normally sells in the tens of thousands. The book, which was thought provoking, thoroughly researched and very balanced, did extremely badly in terms of sales despite glowing reviews. This is a problem the French just do not wish to confront, preferring to act secretly rather than openly."

This sense of malaise over an issue as fundamental as the right to live or die was summed up by Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, Director of the Centre for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, commenting on the Dutch law on mercy killing: "Though the law outlines strict criteria that must be followed before the request for euthanasia is granted, many critics voice their concerns about allowing one person to kill another, the role of physicians and how the policy might be abused. It rekindles the debate about how far individuals should be allowed to control life and death, and who, if anyone, should be allowed to help them. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of euthanasia is the confusion of roles it will create for physicians... Should doctors be healers as well as killers?"

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