Mélanie Gomez / Credits: Aline Morcillo / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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7:31 a.m., April 23, 2024
With an expected arrival in the hemicycle on May 27, the text on the end of life is currently being reworked by a special commission. But geriatricians do not understand why they were not called to participate in this commission, when they have to face increasingly depressed and reluctant patients.
Emmanuel Macron had recently opened the way to “conditional assistance in dying” by promising a text from the month of April. A special commission has thus begun a series of hearings with caregivers, patients and associations in order to refine the text which must soon be presented to the Assembly. But the main absentees from this meeting are the geriatricians who were not summoned by this commission, even though their involvement in the process of assisted dying is nevertheless clearly mentioned in several articles of the bill. .
“People are very worried”
A bill that has already complicated their daily work for more than a year. Indeed, the possible opening of assisted dying has introduced a loss of trust with elderly patients, explains Dr Sophie Moullias, head of the ethics, rights and support committee of the French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.
“There are many who don’t want to come to the hospital saying ‘we know that in the hospital, we don’t treat old people well and we know that today, we prefer to kill them.’ People are very worried and they are convinced that there will inevitably be pain, suffering, that we will tell them that we can no longer do anything at their age and that we will offer them the injection. or the midnight broth”.
Whether the geriatricians are heard or not, the text will continue its legislative path. After examination by this special commission, the revised text will arrive in the hemicycle on May 27.