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BeBro
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of the Krauts
Mar 2000
time: 06:31
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No, not me personally, so don´t hold your breath 
Maybe you already read that, but I saw no thread about it (oh and please could we forget the "funny" jokes about France for this thread):
quote:
BERCK-SUR-MER, France -- France is facing calls to reform its ban on euthanasia after the death of an accident victim whose plea to let his mother end his life gripped the nation.
Vincent Humbert, 22, died Friday after doctors ceased their fight to keep the quadriplegic alive following his mother Marie's injection barbiturate into his intravenous drip late on Wednesday.
His brother Laurent Humbert told LCI television: "We have what we wanted, he has what he wanted. I am happy my brother is free at last. It's an enormous relief."
Their father had pleaded with doctors to abandon their efforts to save his son's life after his wife's euthanasia bid left their son in a coma. He said he was "furious and revolted" by the attempts to save his son.
Humbert's case captured the heart of France and even moved President Jacques Chirac -- who has a severely handicapped daughter – to take a personal interest in the family, after Humbert wrote to him in November 2002 asking to be allowed to die.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and other leading ministers resisted calls for a reform of the euthanasia ban.
"Life doesn't belong to politicians," Raffarin said in an interview in Saturday's edition of Le Figaro daily under the headline: "Euthanasia: Raffarin refuses to change the law."
Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon told the daily he opposed a change of law. Earlier, he called for reform and said Vincent's mother could feel proud of having reopened the debate about assisted suicide.
"As a member of the government I can't advocate breaking the law, but we have to open a debate to modify our laws to take account of situations like this," Fillon told Europe 1 radio.
Chirac, who has the authority to pardon law-breakers, refused Humbert's request to be allowed to die last year but kept in close touch with the family.
Former health minister Bernard Kouchner said it was time France caught up with countries that have legalized euthanasia.
"This is one of the most serious problems our society must confront. The Netherlands and Belgium have done it, things are evolving in Britain and they soon will in Italy and Spain. I don't want my country to be last," he told Europe 1 radio.
In a sign of a shift to a more open stance on the issue in France, Humbert's doctors issued a statement saying they had taken the decision to "limit active treatment" given Vincent's condition and "the wish he had expressed numerous times."
The public prosecutor, who on Thursday released Humbert's mother from police custody, ordered an autopsy and said an inquiry would follow.
Humbert, plunged into a long coma by a car accident in 2000, planned his death to coincide with the publication of his book, "I Ask for the Right to Die," which he dictated using only a remaining flicker of movement in his thumb.
In it, he says: "I am glad to have caused a rumpus if it can be of help, not to me but to others. If my shattered life, my death, can help those who, like me, wish to ask to die."
Humbert talked daily to his mother by pressing his thumb into her palm to select letters as she read the alphabet aloud.
He ends his book: "Do not judge her. What she has done for me is without doubt the most beautiful proof of love there is."
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What your personal opinion, and how does your country handle such things? Never thought about it, I´m not even sure what German law says about this....
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28-09-2003 13:29
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