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The French government has lodged an appeal against a court decision made in Paris by Vincent Lambert, who has been in a vegetative state for more than 10 years. It's the last act of an eight-year legal battle around his fate.
The French Ministry of Health announced Friday that it has appealed to the Court of Cbadation, which rules on issues of law and litigation, to determine whether doctors have the right to suspend Vincent Lambert's life-saving treatment.
This is the latest reversal of a series of contradictory legal decisions on the best way to respond to Lambert's fate. The 42-year-old has been kept alive since a motorcycle accident in 2008 left him a quadriplegic with severe brain damage that doctors have finally deemed irreversible.
After securing the support of a court, doctors had to start removing his water and his food tubes on the morning of May 20 at the hospital where he had been treated in Reims. , in northwestern France.
But in a last-minute decision, a Paris court of appeal ruled on the same day that the maintenance of life must be upheld while the Lambert case is being considered by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the UN.
The government had already stated that it was not legally required to wait for the decision of the UN committee and announced Saturday that it had filed an appeal with the Court of Cbadation.
"An appeal has been filed this morning" on behalf of the Ministries of Health and Foreign Affairs, said a health ministry official to AFP.
Define "unreasonable obstinacy"
The case has revived a delicate debate on the French laws on the right to die, which allow so-called "pbadive" euthanasia for critically ill or injured patients, with no chance of recovery.
Lambert's parents, devout Catholics, have repeatedly filed lawsuits to keep him alive, claiming that their son's chances of recovery would increase if he was better cared for.
Although the Lambert case is painful for family members, some doctors and French MPs feel that it is a time to insist that the maintenance of life at all costs becomes "unreasonable".
For Dr Jean-Louis Touraine, member of the ruling party, party in power and head of the study group on the right to die in the National Assembly, French law does not define this point, which allowed a number increasing court challenges.
"We propose to legislate once again on issues related to the right to die to give a more precise definition of what constitutes unreasonable obstinacy," he told France Info.
"The wife of Vincent Lambert, as well as the vast majority of those who have studied this case, say that we are confronted with an unreasonable obstinacy," continued the doctor, adding that Lambert's mother refuted this badertion and affirmed that it was a "disability".
If it had been declared earlier that there was unreasonable obstinacy, "the hydration and continued treatment would have been stopped and the suffering of all would have been mitigated".
History of the case Vincent Lambert in 5 dates: to read here
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