L’EUTHANASIE : LE DROIT ULTIME

Denis Labayle is an angry man. Head of the department of gastroenterology in a hospital in the region of Paris, everyday he encounters patients who are reaching the end of their life. Like most of his colleagues, he helps these patients to die, in agreement with their wish and that of those who are close to them.
He is not a pro euthanasia activist, but a doctor who acts with compassion, in accordance with his duty.
Using his own experience as a basis for discussion, Denis Labayle starts by denouncing the way words become twisted: too often, euthanasia becomes synonymous with suicide or murder. Similarly, he denies the spurious distinction between ‘active’ and passive’ euthanasia.
He then deconstructs the so-called principle of the ‘respect for life’, and the awful lack of therapeutic and social support which so many patients encounter, faced as they are with a schizophrenic medical system and the extraordinary gap between outdated laws and the discourse of the authorities on the one hands, and the daily practice in hospitals on the other.
Labayle also denounces the ‘good apostles’. Those who forget how little actual support is on offer to fight pain, and those who refuse the possibility of a ‘life testament’ in which we would all establish how we wish to die. Euthanasia, properly understood, represents the ultimate freedom. It is also a means to reintegrate death as an integral part of our social existence.

Denis Labayle is both a witness with strong convictions and a writer. He is the author of five essays (mostly published by Seuil), including La Vie devant nous, 1995, an inquest into ageing and retirement homes that has become a key text on this topic. He is also the author of five novels.