Vet convicted of helping friend with Charcot’s disease commit suicide

A veterinarian, released in May 2022 for “forgery and use of forgery” for having written false prescriptions allowing the suicide of a friend suffering from Charcot’s disease, was found guilty on appeal, Thursday November 30 in Angers, but exempted from sentence. At the hearing before the criminal court, the sixty-year-old veterinarian explained that he had “first refused” to respond to his friend’s request, eventually giving in to his distress.

This veterinarian’s friend, suffering from this incurable neurodegenerative disease, aged 59, was found dead at his home on May 21, 2019. He had left a writing before killing himself: “You have to let me go this time.”. His autopsy revealed the presence of a deadly molecule from veterinary euthanasia products. A judicial investigation for assassination and attempted assassination had been opened against the veterinarian, accusations finally abandoned during the investigation.

“If assisted suicide is not punishable by criminal law, it is the means provided that are. There is legislative hypocrisy. We do not dare condemn assisted suicide but we prevent it from indirect way. It is not up to a clear debate on the end of life and its ethics”estimated the defense lawyer, Antoine Barret, at the end of the appeal hearing, which was held at the end of June.