The absence”framing” is “responsible for evil die“French, estimated Tuesday September 13 Jean-Louis Touraine, former LREM deputy for the Rhône and vice-president of the Hospital Federation of France while the ethics committee considers possible this Tuesday a “active assistance in dying“Strictly supervised. Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a citizens’ convention on the end of life in October. The objective is to lead to a new law in 2023. According to him, the priority is the development of palliative care: “It must be accessible to all and not to only a quarter of people at the end of life who request it“, he believes.
franceinfo: Do you approve of the position of the Ethics Committee?
Jean Louis Touraine: The committee is quite right to say that strict supervision is necessary because the lack of supervision that we are currently experiencing is partly responsible for the well-known French “bad death”. The proof is that while there are hundreds of French people who are going to end their lives in Belgium, Switzerland or elsewhere because there are improved conditions, on the other hand, there are no Belgians, no Spaniards, no Swiss, no people who come to France to end their days because you know you’re ending your life badly. So, this needs to be corrected. And in fact, today, since there is no suitable law, no sufficient framework, unfortunately, there are illicit and therefore uncontrolled practices, such as clandestine euthanasia, for example. There are people who want to wait for natural death. This is not always respected, because someone decides without their knowledge when they are at the end of their life, to rush things. Conversely, others want to be relieved of a very, very painful agony. And those are not heard either.
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Does this involve the development of palliative care?
It must be accessible to all and not to only a quarter of people at the end of life who request it. Multiply it by at least three. Currently, there are departments where there is no access to palliative care at all. You realize ? Obviously, when you are lucky enough to live in Paris, Lyon, or other big cities, you can find support in palliative care, but France is a desert in this regard. Yes, we must develop palliative care. Yes, we must listen to the sick. I make it a question of patient rights.
The end-of-life patient has the right to be heard. He must assert his rights.
Jean-Louis Touraine, vice-president of the French Hospital Federationon franceinfo
Already, the first right is to be heard, to be able to formulate one’s request. And if he is in a proper setting, his agony can be ended when it is very painful solemnly. I agree with this framework that the ethics committee wants.
What do you think of the establishment of the Citizens’ Convention?
This will allow for a broad discussion in society. She is ready. All the opinion polls show that at least nine out of ten French people, even among churchgoers, those who go to mass every Sunday, for example, for the Catholic religion, are in favor of this freedom of choice of sick at the end of life, as shown by the newspaper La Croix in its survey. This is also true among doctors, even if there is a percentage of people who are opposed to it. We must respect them. That’s the secret. You have to respect different points of view. There are more traditional people. They deserve to be respected, even if it is the law of the majority which makes it possible to define the framework in which this will be done.