"Govt ruling deprives France’s Terri Schiavo of food and water until he dies"

Vincent Lambert, known as France’s Terri Schiavo, has lost his last possible legal recourse in his home country against a medical decision ordering slow euthanasia.

The efforts to save the live of the minimally conscious, tetraplegic 42-year-old man by his parents and two siblings will go no further in French jurisdictions after the Conseil d’Etat (Council of State) decided Tuesday that Lambert must in his own “interests” be deprived of food and fluids and placed under deep sedation until he dies.

Pierre and Viviane Lambert and two of their children appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which will decide whether their case is admissible. But in a previous ruling, the ECHR already decided in 2015 that a decision to make Vincent die of thirst and hunger was in line with the European Convention of Human Rights, whose member states are free to decide that artificial feeding and hydration can be defined as “treatment,” not “care.”

There is little hope at this stage that the European Court will accept the case, and its decision is expected to be handed down soon.

In a last-ditch attempt, a second international appeal was made to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (OHCHR) that verifies compliance with the convention of the same name ratified by France in 2010.

The OHCSR will also rule on the appeal’s admissibility as a first step. In practice, if not in law, the death decision will not be executed before then. The decision is also expected to be suspended if the OHCCSR agrees to examine the Lambert’s appeal.

Lambert lived through a first attempt to starve him to death in 2013, surviving for 31 days without food and very little liquids. Doctors aiming to put an end to his life said “at the time” that they didn’t really know how to proceed in these cases. But under recent new protocols fixed by law, no fluids are given leading rapidly to death by dehydration – or thirst, to put it bluntly.

A complicated sequence of medical decisions, judiciary appeals and staff renewals at the hospital in Reims, where Lambert has been virtually kept him in a locked room in a palliative care unit since then, gave him a five-year respite.

But during the same period, legislative efforts have been made to facilitate “end-of-life decisions” involving terminal sedation together withdrawal of feeding tubes and hydration.

According to the new “Leonetti-Claeys” law that came into effect in 2016, among others in order to deal with patients like Lambert, all adults residing in France can leave advance directives asking for terminal sedation if they are no longer able to express their will and find themselves in a deeply handicapped condition. Those who are able to express their will can demand terminal sedation and doctors must comply, giving a whole new meaning to “patient autonomy.”

According to the law, treatments that are deemed “useless” or that are or would be the result of “unreasonable obstinacy,” can be refused in any case by a doctor when a person is no longer able to express his or her own will. The doctor’s decision follows a legal “collegial procedure” during which the doctor is required to consult that person’s designated representative, or if not available the patient’s family and friends, as well as other doctors and caregivers. But at the end, the doctor decides.