2023-07-26 08:00:06
Reluctant to the government’s plan to open up a right to active assistance in dying – whether assisted suicide or euthanasia – a dozen learned societies and organizations of health professionals want limit the involvement of physicians in its implementation. Some of their legal arguments resonate favorably with health law scholars.
The caregivers of this collective denounce the effects of the future text of the law, dangerous in their eyes, for their medical practice. “Palliative care was born in France from the refusal of euthanasia and from the desire to find patient care that was neither relentlessness, nor abandonment, nor the administration of a lytic cocktail to kill at the very end of life. From the moment a patient can assert a right to ask to die, this risks dispensing caregivers with all the creativity necessary to relieve their pain and to support them until the end.explains Ségolène Perruchio, doctor and vice-president of the French Society for Support and Palliative Care (SFAP), member of the collective.
At this stage, in charge of the bill, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, delegate minister in charge of territorial organization and the health professions, foresees that it will give rise to a new article in the public health code in the chapter devoted to patient care and rights.
What role for doctors?
The group is campaigning once morest the introduction of such a provision in the public health code. To preserve “the relationship of trust between doctor and patient”say caregivers, assisted suicide or euthanasia cannot be – legally – considered as “an extension of supportive care”.
The lawyers interviewed by The world doubt, however, that they can obtain a reversal of the executive on this point. “If the government decides to open the way to active assistance in dying, it is certain that there must be a provision in the public health code indicating the specific conditions giving rise to the sanctions provided for in the code. penal if they are not respected, says Claudine Esper, honorary professor of medical law at the University of Paris. This is exactly the pattern planned today for organ donation or transplants…”
“As active assistance in dying is considered a new right, it seems difficult not to refer to it in the public health code, which deals with the rights of patients, abounds François Vialla, university professor at the Faculty of Law of Montpellier. Not including it in the public health code would mean that doctors are not involved in decision-making., continues this specialist in medical law. However, the government provides that they establish a diagnosis of the patient, or even that they write a prescription for the delivery of a product allowing suicide.
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