{"id":4379,"date":"2019-07-16T15:53:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/?p=4379"},"modified":"2019-07-16T16:10:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T16:10:58","slug":"vincent-lambert-death-by-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2019\/07\/vincent-lambert-death-by-discrimination\/","title":{"rendered":"Vincent Lambert: death by discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vincent Lambert: death by discrimination –\u00a0<\/strong>July 16, 2019
\n<\/strong>Taylor Hyatt \u2013 Policy Analyst & Outreach Coordinator,\u00a0<\/strong>Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Vincent Lambert died last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the past few weeks, all eyes have been on the French courts as they determined his fate. Mr. Lambert was severely injured in a car accident in 2008. Various news reports described him as \u201cquadriplegic\u201d with a brain injury, in a \u201cvegetative state<\/a>,\u201d in a minimally conscious state, or used multiple terms<\/a> to describe his condition. The phrase used most consistently throughout the media coverage, \u201cright to die,\u201d does not capture what the case was really about: disability rights.<\/p>\n

After the accident, Mr. Lambert used a feeding tube, but could still breathe without assistance. He could not speak, nor did he appear to respond to questions or commands.\u00a0 He had cycles of sleeping and waking, where he opened his eyes, moved his limbs and sometimes smiled or cried.\u00a0 In 2011 he was evaluated by the Coma Science Group at the Li\u00e8ge University Hospital in Belgium, which determined that he was in a \u201cminimally conscious, plus\u201d state and recommended that attempts be made to find a way to communicate with him.\u00a0 He subsequently received physiotherapy for one year, and 87 sessions with a speech\/language therapist, which were deemed \u201cunsuccessful.\u201d\u00a0 Evaluations done in 2014 and 2018 by a team of doctors affiliated with the hospital in Rehms where Mr. Lambert was treated described his condition as \u201cvegetative,\u201d a view that was still contested at the time of his death.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lambert had no directive in place expressing what he wished to happen if he ever became incapacitated. A bitter family feud arose as a result. Mr. Lambert\u2019s wife Rachel, and six of his eight siblings, maintained that he would not want to live with a severe cognitive disability. The two remaining siblings joined their devout Catholic parents, Pierre and Viviane Lambert, in fighting to continue the tube feeding. <\/strong>Since 2013, Mr. Lambert\u2019s parents have appealed to various authorities on multiple occasions using different legal arguments, including the European Court of Human Rights<\/a> (under Article 2<\/a> of its convention, the Right to Life) and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities<\/a>. Article 25<\/a> of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities calls on states to \u201cprevent discriminatory denial of\u2026food and fluids on the basis of disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Court of Cassation \u2013 the highest applicable appeals court in France \u2013 finally ordered that his feeding tube be removed<\/a> on July 2 of this year. Anyone familiar with Terri Schiavo\u2019s story<\/a> will see multiple parallels between the two cases, and the questions raised therein.<\/p>\n

The campaign to withdraw food and fluids was prompted by Mr. Lambert\u2019s supposed \u201cresistance\u201d to care he was receiving.\u00a0 As Kevin Yuill<\/a> pointed out, this points to an inconsistency in the position of those advocating the withdrawal of food and fluids; was Mr. Lambert capable of having and expressing an opinion about his care through his behaviour<\/a>, and therefore possessing the right to refuse care? Or was he in a vegetative state, in which case his movements should be interpreted as reflexive and meaningless?<\/p>\n

Another crucial issue raised by the Lambert case is the idea that disabled people must\u00a0 meet a certain threshold of functioning, or potential for improvement, in order to justify their existence and to receive the necessities of life (food and fluids).\u00a0 The view that death is preferable to severe disability led to a modification of France\u2019s Public Health Code<\/a> in February of 2016 to allow for the passive euthanasia of people like Mr. Lambert who were receiving \u201cartificial life support\u201d (tube feeding).\u00a0 The law allows treatments that are \u201cunnecessary\u201d or \u201cdisproportionate\u201d to be stopped; in Mr. Lambert\u2019s case food and fluids were deemed to be \u201cunnecessary\u201d and \u201cdisproportionate\u201d because he was unlikely to achieve a certain level of functioning.<\/p>\n

As well, the record is unclear as to what kind of ongoing rehabilitative care Mr. Lambert received, aside from the physiotherapy and speech\/language sessions recommended by the Coma Science group three years after his injury.\u00a0 The team who evaluated Mr. Lambert in 2014 and 2018 noted that his condition had deteriorated; can that be linked to the kind of care he was (or was not) receiving?<\/p>\n

Finally, the question of whether a feeding tube constitutes \u201cartificial\u201d life support was not sufficiently addressed.\u00a0 Not Dead Yet raised this question in the California Supreme Court in the Wendland<\/em><\/a> case in 2000; if a person receives nutrition through a tube taken by mouth, that is not medical treatment; why should that same tube be considered \u201cmedical treatment\u201d because it goes into the person\u2019s stomach?<\/p>\n

If nothing else, courts should have given more weight to the fact that death is permanent. Mr. Lambert\u2019s life changed drastically after the accident. Requiring the support of family and professionals does not make a person\u2019s life \u201cpointless\u201d or \u201ca waste of resources.\u201d When Mr. Lambert\u2019s wife no longer wished to care for him, calling for his death was not a humane response \u2013 especially when his parents were willing to take over. We only get one chance at life.<\/p>\n

Another disabled person starved and dehydrated to death while the world watched. I take some solace in the fact that he was sedated when his feeding tube came out, though this does not make his fate right or less unnerving. May Vincent Lambert rest in peace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n
\nRead Taylor’s thoughts on Vincent Lambert, the disabled French man who died after a decade-long family feud over his feeding tube.\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Vincent Lambert: death by discrimination”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Vincent Lambert: death by discrimination”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[122,545,546,250,253,543,547],"class_list":["post-4379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-blog","tag-kevin-yuill","tag-minimally-conscious-state","tag-terri-schiavo","tag-united-nations","tag-vincent-lambert","tag-wendland","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4379"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4387,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions\/4387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}