French medical body for euthanasia in `exceptional` cases
Baku, February 15 (AZERTAC). France`s medical ethics council said Thursday that assisted suicide should be allowed in exceptional cases when suffering patients make “persistent and lucid requests” in a step forward to legalizing euthanasia.
Invoking a “duty to humanity,” the body said that this should be permitted upon the “persistent, lucid and repeated requests from someone suffering from an ailment for which the treatment has become ineffective”.
But it said the condition should be verified “not by a sole doctor but a medical team”.
The council did not use the term euthanasia but spoke of “assisted death”.
President Francois Hollande had referred a report on allowing assisted suicide to the council to examine the precise circumstances under which such steps could be authorised, with a view to producing draft legislation by June.
“The existing legislation does not meet the legitimate concerns expressed by people who are gravely and incurably ill,” Hollande had said. The report submitted to the council said physicians should be allowed to authorise interventions that ensure quicker deaths for terminal patients in three specific sets of circumstances.
In the first case, the patient involved would be capable of making an explicit request to that effect or have issued advance instructions in the event of him or her becoming incapable of expressing an opinion.
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