Tumor Death Sparks Debate on Euthanasia in France Death of Woman With Disfiguring Tumor Revives Euthanasia Debate in France
By ELAINE GANLEY
By Elaine Ganley
The Associated Press
PARIS
A woman with a rare tumor that had eaten away at her face is accomplishing in death what she could not do while alive: reviving the debate over euthanasia in France.
Chantal Sebire failed to convince a court to allow her to undertake a “doctor-assisted suicide” with a lethal dose of barbiturates to forever end her suffering. Her sudden death Wednesday – two days after the court refused her request – brought calls to re-evaluate French law to assure the right to die.
“The demand to calm suffering is a legitimate demand,” Justice Minister Rachida Dati said Thursday.
A French law adopted in 2005 allows terminally ill people to refuse treatment in favor of death but stops short of allowing active euthanasia.
Dati said the law needs to be revisited for “necessary adaptations” but other government ministers disagree, highlighting the difficulties raised in legislating an ethical issue.
Not all European countries ban euthanasia. In neighboring Belgium, 78-year-old Belgian writer Hugo Claus, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, ended his life in an Antwerp hospital by euthanasia – on the day Sebire died. Euthanasia is also legal in the Netherlands. In Switzerland, counselors or physicians can prepare the lethal dose, but patients must take it on their own.
Sebire, a former teacher who died at age 52, was diagnosed nearly eight years ago with esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer. A tumor had burrowed through her sinuses and nasal cavities, causing her nose to swell to several times its original size and pushing one eyeball out of the socket, completely exposing it.
She had difficulty eating, slept sitting up and often suffered hemorrhages, said her lawyer, Gilles Antonowicz.
It was not immediately known what killed Sebire or whether there would be a full investigation.
She was found in her home in the Dijon region east of Paris by the eldest of her three children, ages 29, 27 and 13.
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