Doctors removes man’s life support after 11 years, Parents Cry Murder.
On Sunday, the father of Vincent Lamber, a severely brain-damaged patient at the heart of a bitter right-to- die case, denounced his son’s “murder” after a French hospital began removing him from life support.
90-year-old Pierre Lambert told journalists at Sebastopol hospital in the northeastern city of Reims, where his son has been in a vegetative state since a car accident in 2008, “its murder in disguise, its Euthanisia”
The crash left Lambert a quadriplegic with severe brain damage that doctors say its irreversible. But the question of whether to continue keeping him alive artificially has divided his family and the nation.
Doctors began taking him off life support on Teusday, just days after a final ruling by France’s highest appeals court on a case which has taken the warring Lambert family to France and Europe’s top courts over the past six years.
His deeply-Catholic parents, Pierre and Vivianne, have fought passionately to keep him alive along with two of his siblings, but his wife Rachel and six other brothers and sisters believe he should have the right to die with dignity.
On Sunday, both parents were at his bedside just days after doctors began removing his water and feeding tubes while ensuring a “profound and continuous sedation”.
The pair believe their son is merely handicapped and have fought to have him moved to a specialist treatment unit, denouncing the court decision as “madness”
A Facebook group called “I support Vincent” backs the parents and pledged to hold a demonstration in Paris on Monday which will be attended by the parents’ lawyers
Lambert, who worked as a psychiatric nurse, has always wished never to be “kept artificially alive” according to those close to him but was never put into writing.
