Mother and doctor in French mercy killing will not be charged

A state prosecutor has intensified France's impassioned right-to-die debate by dropping criminal charges against the mother and doctor of a handicapped man whose life they helped to end.

Vincent Humbert, a fireman, was 19 when a car crash in 2000 left him paralysed from the neck down, mute and almost totally blind.

He retained his intellectual faculties but his quality of life was so appalling that he sent a message to President Jacques Chirac demanding to be allowed to end his life with dignity.

.......

Mr Humbert's mother, Marie, campaigned for three years in support of her son's wish to die before acting on his request and giving him an overdose of sedatives in 2003.

Dr Frédéric Chaussoy later switched off the life support system and injected a lethal dose of drugs.

He faced life imprisonment for poisoning with premeditation, while Mrs Humbert risked five years in jail for administering toxic substances to her son.

But the prosecutor in the case, Gérald Lesigne, said he had dropped the charges after studying the "moral aspects of the offence, not its material and legal aspects".



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/04/weuth04.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/04/ixworld.html

Let us all give thanks to the French for showing us the way in immigration policy and imperial hubris. They were years ahead of their time.