In reply to Vincent Lambert died on Thursday at 8.24am
Are brain damage and dementia not glamorous enough to allow patients to live, because the intellectual impairment really does make all of us uneasy about our own stupidity?
In a collective opinion page on April 18, 70
“doctors and professionals specialized in the care of persons with cerebral palsy in a vegetative or pauci-relational state”
said about Vincent Lambert that
“it is obvious that he is not at the end of life”.
Question might be:
When is a person at the end of his life?
And how far can, or may we go when we see an animal or human being in a certain state which does not seem a “good living” state?
When we see an animal suffering a lot we do not let it continue to suffer, but in the case of a human being what are we willing to do? And can one say the brain-damaged French man who was in a state of impaired consciousness for 11 years, Vincent Lambert, was suffering? When we saw life pictures of him we could not have that impression, even saw moments him laughing.
The doctors decided to stop hydration and nutrition, while keeping him as comfortable as possible while he could die of thirst and starvation. Would we let an animal starve to death?
How does it come we as human beings do not find it horrible to have another human being die of thirst and hunger? Was it then not better to have the man sedated out of his mind?
We don’t starve animals to death because it’s inhumane.
How on earth can this be allowed to be done to a human being?
In such instances is it than not better to bring a person in a deep sleep and have him die in that sleep?
Some View on the World 