should the law be assessed?
End of life is a sensitive issue. The current Clayes-Leonetti law allows deep sedation to accompany the patient until natural death. A citizens’ convention opens this Friday
to try to determine whether to move the law forward. Christophe Devauxdoctor at La Mirandière, the palliative care unit of the Dijon University Hospital is not convinced that the law should be evaluated.
Do you find it good that citizens are questioned on this issue?
Yes, absolutely. This is a question that comes up regularly at the political level, but it is important for all of us to be able to express our views or in any case give a point of view on these questions, even difficult ones. But it is also important that we can know the reality of what the sick people are going through, the medical teams too, who take care of them. It is important because we are confronted with situations which are a bit extreme when these patients are seriously ill and come to experience their intimate and profound sufferings.
Is the Clayes-Leonetti law sufficient for you?
This law is a good law that has really enabled us to be able to respond to a large number of people who have reached a very advanced stage of their illness and who can’t take it anymore. It’s a good law because it provides guidance and help for professionals. All the same, it poses relatively substantial ethical problems. But it’s a good law because it allows us not to cross this red line which would cause death.
Do you have a lot of patients asking to die?
Many ask to die when they are carriers of a serious illness. Very little wanted in fact the passage to the act. Very few really asked the doctors to provoke their departure. It’s really a tiny handful and there are many studies that are starting to come out that even show that in fact when a person makes such a request, that request changes over time. These studies show that from the moment we engage support with these people, that we really listen to them, less well, their request can be strongly modulated. Up to one in three patients who, after a week, end up no longer keeping die.
Would you be more in favor of assisted suicide than euthanasia?
I may not be in favor of either one or really the other. In all cases, there is a prescription, a delivery, a medical gesture.