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End of life: questions about a bill
The bill on end of life was presented on Wednesday April 10 to the Council of Ministers. It contains two components: one plans to develop palliative care, the other provides a framework to enable a patient to be supported towards death. This point raises many questions.
(France 2)
The bill on end of life was presented on Wednesday April 10 to the Council of Ministers. It contains two components: one plans to develop palliative care, the other provides a framework to enable a patient to be supported towards death. This point raises many questions.
Choose the moment of your death when the pain is no longer bearable, or when there is no longer any hope of recovery: the government is opening the way to assisted dying. This new text on the end of life is awaited by associations. Pierre Juston, administrator of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, greets “breakthrough” which allows “to escape from the hypocrisy of the current framework”.
Unanswered questions
Five conditions must be respected: being an adult, having all your mental faculties, a vital prognosis in the short or medium term, an incurable illness and suffering considered unbearable. Some of the criteria raise questions in the medical world, such as the short-term vital prognosis, which is almost impossible to predict according to doctors. “We would be wrong almost every time”notes Professor Pascal Pujol, oncologist.
Several associations would also like the patient to be able to ask a loved one or a doctor to administer the lethal product even if they are able to do it themselves, which is not the case in the text. The bill, which also plans to strengthen palliative care, must be examined from May 27 in the National Assembly.
