Michel Houellebecq and Pope Francis are two names seldom found in the
same sentence. Yet they are united in decrying the death of Vincent
Lambert, the disabled French nurse who died this week after having his
food and water removed.
Vincent Lambert, the brain-damaged French man who was in a state of
impaired consciousness for 11 years while his family fought over his
medical care,
died on Thursday at 8.24am. After getting approval from a court, doctors stopped giving him food and water. It took him nine days to die.
Although his wife claimed that Lambert had said that he would not
wish to live in such an impaired state, there were no written
instructions with his end-of-life wishes.
French media have reported that his parents plan to sue his medical
team. While euthanasia is illegal in France, doctors are allowed to
put terminally ill patients into deep sedation until death. Lambert’s
parents have argued that, while severely handicapped, their son was not
“terminally ill”.
Being the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis’s views are, and
are supposed to be, predictable, this can not be said about France’s most
acclaimed and controversial novelist, Michel Houellebecq. He wrote
"Vincent Lambert was in no way prey to
unbearable suffering, he was not suffering any pain at all (...) He was
not even at the end of life. He lived in a particular mental state, the
most honest of which would be to say that we know
almost nothing …
It was strange when we saw pictures of that man laying in his be, seeing him react on words, we can wonder in what way he would be conscious or to be considered alive?
In how far can we go into a human's mind and go to decide for him or her? In a certain way the doctors and his wife decided to allow nature to take its course. But should they have kept feeding him?
Like America’s Terri Schiavo case, this has provoked controversy
around the world. Thousands upon thousands of people in “vegetative
states” in nursing homes could be at risk of having their hydration and
nutrition withdrawn if doctors and courts accept the reasoning behind
the decision to allow Lambert to die.
Reactions to his death show that France is as divided as ever.
“It is
a real relief for us,”
said François Lambert, Lambert’s nephew.
“Vincent had been the victim of irrational medicine for years. It had to
stop.”
Unsurprisingly,
Pope Francis tweeted:
“May God the Father welcome Vincent Lambert in His arms. Let us not
build a civilization that discards persons those whose lives we no
longer consider to be worthy of living: every life is valuable, always.”
Surprisingly,
Michel Houellebecq,
the controversial and internationally acclaimed nihilist novelist,
agreed with the Pope. He was scathing in his criticism of how Lambert’s
death had come about. In an op-ed in
Le Monde, he attacked the
French Minister for Health, Dr Agnès Buzyn, for using Lambert as a
symbolic battering ram to open a breach in attitudes towards the
severely disabled.
“I admit that when the Minister of
‘Solidarity and health’ had appealed in
to the high court, I was stunned. I was sure that the government in this
case would remain neutral. After all, [President] Emmanuel Macron had
declared, not long before, that he did not wish to interfere; I thought,
stupidly, that his ministers would be on the same line.
"Vincent Lambert was in no way prey to
unbearable suffering, he was not suffering any pain at all (...) He was
not even at the end of life. He lived in a particular mental state, the
most honest of which would be to say that we know almost nothing …
"Dignity cannot be (altered) by a
deterioration, as catastrophic as it may be, in one’s state of health.
Or is it that there has been, indeed, a 'change in attitude'. I do not
think there is any reason to rejoice, "
