catapult magazine

Son’s Wish to Die, and Mother’s Help, Stir French Debate
By CRAIG S. SMITH

New York Times Published: September 27, 2003

PARIS, Sept. 26 ? “I Ask the Right to Die,” written by Vincent Humbert, a 22-year-old French paraplegic, hit bookstores here on Thursday. Today he died, two days after his mother put an overdose of sedatives into his intravenous line.

She acted on the third anniversary of the car accident that left him paralyzed, mute and blind.

His death and his book calling for the legalization of euthanasia have transfixed the nation and drawn the debate over assisted suicide out of hospital wards and into people’s homes.

Assisted suicide is outlawed in France but is permitted under certain circumstances in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is fully legal in Switzerland, where there are associations that help terminally ill patients kill themselves.

Radio call-in programs, television talk shows and the opinion pages of the country’s newspapers have swelled with discussion of Mr. Humbert’s death and what punishment, if any, his mother, Marie Humbert, should receive.

Ms. Humbert, 48, who had campaigned for the right to end her son’s life, was taken into custody by the police on suspicion of attempted murder late Wednesday but was released on Thursday and allowed to see her son before he died. She was subsequently hospitalized at an undisclosed location. Her current whereabouts is unknown.

Lib?ration, the country’s largest left-wing daily, praised Ms. Humbert in an editorial headlined, “Let us end this hypocrisy.” An editorial in Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, called only for a national debate but pointed out that the country’s national ethics consulting committee recommended in January 2000 that a law be passed legalizing euthanasia in exceptional cases.

So far, the country’s judicial system is dealing gently with Ms. Humbert, who won enormous public sympathy in her campaign for euthanasia.

Justice Minister Dominique Perben asked prosecutors in a statement today “to act with the greatest humanity in applying the law, taking into account the suffering of the mother and the young man.” The lead prosecutor in the case told reporters that an official inquiry into Mr. Humbert’s death would be undertaken “in due time.”

Mr. Humbert’s plight captured national attention last December after he wrote a direct appeal to France’s president, Jacques Chirac, asking for the legal right to end his own life. Mr. Chirac wrote back that he could not grant the request “because the president of the republic doesn’t have that right, but I understand your helplessness and deep despair in facing the living conditions that you endure.”

Mr. Humbert then set about writing his book from his bed at the same hospital in the northern port of Berck-sur-Mer where Jean-Dominique Bauby, all but incapacitated by a stroke, wrote his haunting memoir, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” Mr. Bauby died in 1997, two days after his book was published.

Mr. Humbert wrote his book with the help of a journalist, Fr?d?ric Veille, by pressing with his thumb and nodding his head to spell out words as Mr. Veille read repeatedly through the alphabet.

In “I Ask the Right to Die,” Mr. Humbert recounts with heartbreaking bitterness how his life as a healthy, careful young fireman ended when his car met an oncoming truck on a narrow country road. After enduring months of ebbing hope that he would recover any of his lost faculties ? he even lost his senses of taste and smell ? he decided he wanted to die and with his mother began the campaign.

Mr. Humbert had argued to be allowed to end his life legally in France because he was unable to afford the cost of transport abroad, even if it could have been arranged.

“Then, so that you understand me better, so that the debate about euthanasia finally reaches another level, so that this word and this act are no longer a taboo subject, so that we no longer let live lucid people like me who want to put an end to their own suffering, I wanted to write this book that I will never read,” he wrote.

In the book, which was the second-best-selling title on France’s Amazon.com Web site this morning, Mr. Humbert described asking his mother to kill him and her decision to do so. As the third anniversary of his Sept. 24 accident approached, his mother signaled her intention to kill her son in media interviews.

Ms. Humbert injected sedatives into her son’s intravenous drip late Wednesday, sending him into a coma. The family then pleaded with doctors to let him die. Mr. Humbert died today after doctors abandoned efforts to keep him alive, saying in a statement that they had made their “collective and difficult decision in complete independence.”

Mr. Humbert’s book ends with a plea to readers to empathize with his mother and leave her in peace. “What she has done for me is surely the most beautiful proof of love in the world,” he wrote.

As part of the rather narcissistic Baby Boomers (born late 40’s to late 60’s) I expect many of us to be euthanised by our childrens’ generation.

One way to solve the growing Social Security crisis. (tho quite evil).

Here’s a recent editorial promoting Oregon’s euthanasia law:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/opinion/14KRIS.html?hp

The leukemia left him so weak that he couldn’t even hold a book, and he became utterly demoralized. " `I don’t want to go through this,’ " Mrs. Tauber remembers him telling her. " `I don’t want you to see me lose my mind.’ "

So Mr. Tauber obtained a lethal dose of medicine under the Oregon law, after getting statements from two doctors that he had less than six months to live. “It was a very difficult decision for me,” Mrs. Tauber said. “But he made it easier by saying he was giving me the best of himself and not leaving me with ugly memories of him diminishing.”

The flipside of the question of euthanasia is whether we have an obligation to prolong life as long as possible. Newer technologies allow us to prolong life almost indefinately. I don’t think we are obligated to use these technologies, nor are we by law. Hence the exitence of “living wills.”

I saw an interview recently with Peter Peterson, former Secretary of Commerce under Nixon. He’s done some thinking about health care here in the US. If I understood him correctly, the US government spends more on health care than other countries. I’m not entirely sure I heard him correctly. He did go on to say, however, that as part of his inquiry, he asked British government officials how their costs can be lower than here in the US, even though the British government’s health care is more extensive. THe answer, I thought, was interesting. The US government spends most of its health care budget on extending and advancing the quality of life of the elderly. Technologies for this purpose are expensive. The British government, on the other hand, sends the elderly home to die of natural causes. They simply can’t afford to offer extensive health care coverage and to prolong the lives of the elderly.

On a personal level, I can see why the elderly are so expensive. My grandfather worked most of his life to pay off the farm. Several years ago he sold the farm for a decent chunk of change. He now has Alheimer’s (sp?) disease and is paying a fortune for his health care. Medicare won’t kick in because he has the money (apparently he shoiuld have given his life savings to his children before his health deteriorated). At the rate he’s paying for health care, he will likely lose the entire investment of the farm he had worked his whole life to pay off.

One of the questions I had related to the nationalized health care system some are proposing in this country. I don’t know enough to answer the question, but is the health care cost for the elderly so great that it prohibits such care (as, apparently, in the case of Britain) as part of a more extensive, natioinalized health care system? In other words, will we also have to send the elderly home, instead of giving them the option, as they have now?

We demand many entitlements here in the US. At what point are we asking for a cake and wanting to eat it too? Comments/answers?