It is a last very political message that Alain Cocq chose to leave before dying. Suffering from an incurable orphan disease, this 58-year-old man had campaigned for years for the “Right to die with dignity”. He died in Bern, Switzerland, Tuesday, June 15, at 11:20 a.m., by assisted suicide.
In a posthumous letter entitled ” Letter from beyond the grave ”, it is addressed to the President of the Republic, to members of the government, to deputies, to senators, and to presidential candidates. “I would like to inform you, hereby, of my death with dignity, within the framework of an assisted suicide procedure in Switzerland (natural death)”, he wrote, before denouncing the “Lack of political courage” Mr. Macron and the government “Regarding the refusal to put a bill on the end of life with dignity on the agenda”.
In September 2020, bedridden and fed by tube or by food supplements for two years, crippled with pain in the face of the evolution of a disease that damages the walls of his blood vessels and arteries, Alain Cocq announced that he would stop hydrating and eating. Not being in the terminal phase of an incurable disease, that is to say not living his last hours or his last days, he could not benefit from the Claeys-Leonetti law, which allows deep and continuous sedation until death.
The “archaism” of senators
Like Vincent Humbert, a young man quadriplegic, blind and dumb after a serious road accident, in 2002, and Chantal Sébire, a 52-year-old woman with an incurable tumor in the face, in 2008, Mr. Cocq had written to head of state, asking him “Right to a dignified death, with the active assistance of the medical profession”, by authorizing the latter to prescribe a powerful barbiturate. Faced with the president’s refusal, he reiterated twice, in 2020, a health and hunger strike, before having to give up due to extreme pain.
“This is something Alain thought about a lot, he assumed his choice”, says François Lambert, friend of the deceased, also nephew and former lawyer of Vincent Lambert, nurse in a vegetative state since a road accident in 2008, symbol of the fight for the right to die with dignity. ” The date [du 15 juin], he had known her for a long time, it has been several weeks since he told us, everyone was prepared, and he himself was serene, until the end. “ François Lambert has, however, “Little hope, in the near future” as to the repercussions of this death on an evolution of the legislation: ” VSt is quite depressing, each time we talk about it a lot and, in general, nothing happens. For Vincent Lambert, after six years, it was “Move along, there’s nothing to see…” “he said.
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