France’s top court ruled Tuesday to allow doctors to take Vincent Lambert off life support after nearly six years in a coma, siding with his wife in a case that has revived the debate about euthanasia and bitterly divided his family, reports FRANCE 24.
The Council of State, France's top administrative court, ruled that doctors had the right to end the medical support that has kept Lambert, brain-damaged and in vegetative state, artificially alive since a motorbike accident on the way to work plunged him into a coma in September 2008.
The verdict follows a heart-rending battle between Lambert’s wife Rachel, who was seeking to let the former psychiatric nurse die, and his parents, who took legal action last year to stop her.
Doctors treating Vincent Lambert in the northeastern city of Reims, as well as his wife, nephew and six siblings, wanted to halt intravenous food and water supplies under a 2005 French law that allows for “passive euthanasia”.
But his deeply religious Catholic parents, another brother and another sister opposed the decision and took the matter to court in Chalons-en-Champagne near Reims, which ruled against ending his life earlier this year.
An investigation run by three court-appointed doctors has since concluded that Lambert is in a “completely unconscious vegetative state” and recommended ending his life support.
Rémi Keller, advocate general to the State Council, on Friday urged judges to follow the investigators' advice and allow Lambert to die, saying his treatment had “no other effect than to artificially maintain his unconscious solitude” and that there was no hope of recovery.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.