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The novelist Michel Houellebecq writes today The world about Vincent Lambert, the man injured in a car accident 11 years ago and kept artificially alive since. Vincent Lambert died Thursday morning.
The article is titled "A lesson for all of us" and it is hard and heartbreaking.
Houellebecq is not one of the incredulous: he said that there was no reason to put an end to the treatment that was essential for Vincent Lambert's survival. The unfortunate was finally the victim of us, the media, and our unhealthy desire to turn every stone into an expert justification of every opinion, in the increasingly desperate search for readers and web clicks.
Vincent Lambert was also, according to Michel Houellebecq, a victim of a form of dangerous interference by the state in the private life of an individual.
Houellebecq does not like or trust Agnès Buzyn, the French Minister of Health and Solidarity. He finds the "solidarity" part of his professional title ironic, to say the best.
He wondered why she had to take the case to court, especially since President Emmanuel Macron had promised not to intervene in this case. Houellebecq naively thought, he admits, that it would be the same for the members of the Macron government. He is mistaken.
Government of the people, by the people. . .
The minister said the crucial lesson to be learned from this tragic case is that we should all leave clear written instructions to those who would survive and decide what to do with our still-alive remnants if we suffer in the same way. to become Vincent Lambert, making a rapid linguistic transition from accident victim to deeply disabled, becoming vegetal. Because, of course, it is easier to kill a vegetable than a seriously injured human being.
Vincent Lambert should have known about the starting instructions: he was a nurse after all. And French public hospitals are already overcrowded and underfunded. However, as Michel Houellebecq does not ask himself unreasonably, it can be expensive to provide a tube filled with water and another containing food, especially since it could have been done at home, Vincent's parents having shown their full willingness to take on the job.
The central problem for Houellebecq lies in the fact that we knew absolutely nothing about Vincent Lambert's mental or physical state.
He showed no signs of suffering, doctors were generally in agreement that his condition was irreversible. There are thousands of similar cases in France and around the world.
The "change of mentality" desired by the French Minister of Health following the Lambert case does it mean that we will now start to get rid of others?
In general, says Houellebecq, creatures do not want to die and they do not want to suffer. Whatever our "mentalities", the spectators of this tragic affair, these fundamental facts have not changed since the dawn of animal existence.
Vincent Lambert did he suffer?
As for the possibility for a deeply paralyzed person to suffer intolerably, without being able to inform the rest of us, this problem is elegantly solved by the existence of morphine. Since the discovery of this drug in 1804, no human being has suffered physical pain.
This brings Houellebecq to the issue of human dignity, defined as the respect due to each person. He wonders if the human dignity of Vincent Lambert has been seriously taken into account, much less respected.
The world also publishes an article by the French deputy and medical doctor Jean Leonetti, he who was responsible for informing fellow MEPs during the 2004 debate on euthanasia and the end of human life, a debate which established the right still in force in France.
Dignity is also Leonetti's key word, but he insists that respect for this dignity is as much about protecting extremely vulnerable people as about respecting their supposed wishes.
This tragedy, says Jean Leonetti, far from being a private family affair, took place under the attention of the media, with all that it involves simplification, stupidity and misplaced emotion. Greek drama turned into a soap opera. Even the mention of the Greek drama is unworthy. A man was seriously injured and died. It's just a tragedy.
Neither murderers nor murderers
As a doctor, Leonetti tries to clarify some of the misconceptions conveyed in the last few months of this debate.
Vincent Lambert did not die of hunger or dehydration; nor do patients who use a life support machine die from drowning when their mechanical breathing apparatus is turned off. The doctors who ended Lambert's life are neither murderers nor murderers.
The law requires that the patient clearly express his will to end his life. Several reliable witnesses stated that Vincent Lambert had expressed this wish clearly and repeatedly. The witnesses are not invited to accept this wish; they must only testify that they heard the man express it. The law takes care of the rest, like any human law.
The case of Vincent Lambert has been made possible by modern medicine, for which many of us have so many reasons to be grateful. But as Dr. Jean Leonetti humbly points out, anything science can technically do is not humanly acceptable.
We wish Vincent Lambert and his family the peace they have been denied in the last 11 years.
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