The former journalist and sports boss of Canal+ and beIN Sports has Charcot disease. He organized his assisted suicide in Switzerland.
By VD with AFP
© Philippe RENAULT / MAXPPP / PHOTOPQR/WEST FRANCE
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ATSuffering from Charcot’s disease, an incurable disease, the sports journalist and Canal + figure of the great era Charles Biétry, 79, confides to the daily The Team having organized his assisted suicide in Switzerland. “We organized everything with my wife and my children. I don’t want to be hooked up to a machine to breathe when there’s nothing left, no future. I don’t want to suffer and especially to make my family suffer. […] I registered in Switzerland for assisted suicide, all the papers are signed,” he explains.
“You have to take the last pill yourself. This gesture, it’s easy to say “I’m going to do it” when I’m at the seaside in Carnac [où il vit, NDLR]. When someone hands you the pill and tells you that, two minutes later, you’ll be dead, it’s not that simple. But, in any case, everything is ready”, he develops, a few days after President Macron announced a bill on the end of life “by the end of the summer”.
“When it’s not going anymore, I want to stop”
In this long interview, the former sports journalist recounts the progression of his disease, which is characterized by progressive paralysis of the muscles and a life expectancy not exceeding three to five years once the diagnosis has been made. “The stages, I know them: lower limb, upper limb, throat and larynx… I’m there,” he says. “Then you move on to the first category col stages with the difficulty or even the impossibility of swallowing. […] The next step is attacking the lungs. […] When it doesn’t work anymore, I want to stop. “Charles Biétry also recounts his sports routine which he continues against the advice of his doctors and which, he believes, allowed him to resist illness for a while.
READ ALSOEmmanuel Macron, a date with death “As I was doing everything to rebuild muscles that were leaving” before the disease was diagnosed, “the disease took a long time to become apparent”. “To keep my spirits up, I need sport. The day when I can no longer ride a bike, it will go very quickly, ”he says. Charles Biétry has marked the world of sport and the media over the past 50 years, having revolutionized the relationship between football and television. He is also the author of a scoop on the deaths of the Munich Olympics on September 6, 1972, when he was a reporter for AFP.