the Minister of Health is reserved on a law on “active assistance in dying”

The Minister of Health is reserved on a law on “assisted dying”, as recommended by the end-of-life convention. François Braun estimated, on Saturday April 8, that the priority should go “to the reinforcement of the existing one”.

“The debate on active assistance in dying is still open. A piece of legislation along these lines would profoundly change our society and our relationship to death”, declared the Minister, who is speaking for the first time on the subject in The world. “If society were to move in the direction of active assistance in dying, it could only be in very specific cases and which should be rigorously supervised”, he judges, while Emmanuel Macron announced a bill on the end of life “by the end of the summer”.

Support palliative care

Current legislation, set by the Claeys-Leonetti law of 2016, allows caregivers to irreversibly sedate patients near death, whose suffering is intolerable. But it does not go so far as to authorize assisted suicide (the patient administers the lethal product himself) or euthanasia (a caregiver injects it).

According to François Braun, even by modifying the law, “we will never respond to all situations”. It is “every time the end of a life and each situation is different”. “Whatever option we put on the table, priority must be given to strengthening what already exists. Through greater appropriation of advance directives, by better trained health professionals, by better use of sedation deep and continuous until death: these are tools that we will strengthen by supporting palliative care”, he promises.

The minister says “convinced that if we get there, then there will be a lot less requests for assisted dying”. If the legislation were to evolve towards active assistance in dying, then François Braun “does not want it to impose itself as an obligation on doctors” And “doesn’t believe it necessarily has to be done in a medical environment.”