Vincent Lambert: French coma patient dies after bitter family fight over life support
- Vincent Lambert had been the focus of a decade-long legal battle to maintain his life support
- Doctors switched off the feeding and hydration systems that had kept him alive since a motorcycle accident in 2008
A French man at the centre of a bitter row over right-to-die legislation passed away in hospital on Thursday more than a week after doctors removed his hydration and nutrition tubes, his family said
Vincent Lambert, 42, was involved in a near-fatal car crash in 2008 that left him a quadriplegic with severe brain damage which doctors had long said was irreversible.
Left in a vegetative state, the question of whether to continue keeping him alive artificially divided his family and the nation.
Doctors at a hospital in the northern city of Reims began removing the tubes on July 2 while keeping him heavily sedated following a years-long legal battle that has raged in the highest courts in France and Europe.
The case rekindled a charged debate over France’s right-to-die laws, which allow so-called “passive” euthanasia for severely ill or injured patients who are being kept alive artificially with no chance of recovery.
In May, even Pope Francis got involved, tweeting that it was necessary to “always safeguard life, God’s gift, from its beginning until its natural end”.