2023-07-17 15:46:03
July 17, 2023
In an opinion issued this Monday, July 17, the National Academy of Medicine pleads for an exclusion of euthanasia in the future bill relating to the end of life and accepts, “on an exceptional basis, assistance in suicide, under mandatory conditions”.
The debate on the end of life in France should lead in September to a bill presented to the Council of Ministers. Monday, July 17, the National Academy of Medicine published an opinion on this highly flammable issue.
She supports assisted suicide but excludes euthanasia. The first is active assistance in dying which consists in making a lethal product available to a person who requests it and self-administers it. The second consists of the administration by a third party of a lethal product to a person who requests it.
Several reasons lead academics to reject euthanasia. According to them, it transgresses the Hippocratic oath for doctors. “There is a risk of blurring the benchmarks of their vocation and their commitment, and thereby heightening the current crisis of the lack of caregivers in the health and medico-social sectors and even more so in palliative care”, details the Academy of Medicine.
In addition, with euthanasia, according to them, it would be more difficult to go back once the process has begun. “The possibility of respecting the hesitation and uncertainty of the patient’s ultimate choice is certainly preferable, as is sparing caregivers the heavy burden of performing the medical act themselves, by sticking to the sole prescription of the lethal product”, explain the academics.
For a strict framework
The Academy of Medicine does not want to systematize assisted suicide but to make it a remedy for people suffering from serious and incurable diseases, in a situation of physical and psychological distress. It pleads for a strict framework, offering “the strong guarantees of a collegial decision to protect the most vulnerable, respecting the consciences of those who have undertaken to accompany those who are living a torture to the end, and matching the opening of these rights to a vigilant evaluation for their strict application, guarantee of protection from potential abuses”.
The Academy of Medicine is once morest a new law but for a framed development of the current system “by opening up new rights to help people die as painlessly as possible, by accepting assisted suicide on an exceptional basis, under mandatory conditions”. For this, it is imperative to set up a palliative care offer throughout the territory corresponding to the needs and accompanied by the necessary means ».
The Academy also recommends mandatory, initial and ongoing training in palliative care for all caregivers, to ensure a continuum between curative and palliative care.
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