The picture, the request and the message are not about dignity, nor about relief of suffering.
Chantal is terminally ill. She will die soon. She has lost her senses of taste, smell and vision.
The tumors in her nose are untreatable. Sometimes, she is in great pain.
So why is she asking the French President to die?
There are a range of treatments available to her. One palliative care technique would have her drugged insensible.
But it isn't about palliative care. This afflicted, unsightly former school teacher is making a political statement. She is asking a question that none would dare ask a left wing statesman.
One cannot help her, physically, but one can pray.
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Update
7 comments:
French woman pleads for right to die
Neil Varcoe
A French woman whose face has been badly disfigured by tumours so much so that she is unrecognisable even to her own children, has appealed to President Nicolas Sarkozy to allow her to die.
Former school teacher Chantal Sebire, 52, begged for the right to end the "atrocious" suffering inflicted on her by the disease which has rendered her face unrecognisable because of tumours, according to news agency Agence France-Presse.
Ms Sebire said she suffered from a very rare disease called esthesioneuroblastoma, which attacks the nasal cavity.
It had left her blind and had robbed her of almost all other senses, leaving her in terrible pain.
"An animal would not be allowed to endure what I have to endure," she told AFP from her in central France, pleading with Mr Sarkozy to allow her a dignified death by euthanasia.
Euthanasia is illegal in France, unlike in some other European countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium.
"In 2000, I lost my sense of smell and taste, and then the tumour evolved and ate into my jaws, before attacking the eye socket. I lost my sight in October last year," she said.
The disease caused "atrocious bouts of pain that can last up to four hours at a time" according to Sebire.
The mother of three said that only 200 cases of the disease had been reported globally in the last 20 years.
Leave it to a conservative blogger to make political hay out of the suffering of others. Thanks for showing the world the depths of your compassion.
You must approve comments and I notice there aren't many. Interesting.
What a horrible thing for you to say!! (To paraphrase, she can be medicated until she is delirious?? Have you no compassion at all? Look at the poor woman!! What kind of life do you think she has? How horrible do you think this is for her children?
I wouldn't let my dog suffer in such a way even though it would break my heart to put him to sleep. I would cry and cry. He wouldn't be able to verbalize a choice in the matter, but this woman is of sound mind and has BEGGED to be able to end her suffering.
What kind of a person would be so callous in such a situation? If it was you or your mother, I bet you'd be chirping a different tune.
I'll accept the bait for the moment.
I do not oppose or support euthanasia. I am against the principle of allowing people to be murdered for profit, or because it is easy.
I have had relatives die slowly and painfully and do not wish that on any one.
My chief objection to Chantal's request was that it was not made in her interests, but rather in the interests of political activists, many of whom maintain anonymity so as to avoid the media glare on their work, but also so as to avoid embarrassing those media peoples who are heavily invested in their projects.
Palliative care is what it is, and discussion of such is rarely pretty. But, so as to avoid the legal minefield of murdering people legally, the medical profession has deemed it humane to drug terminally ill peoples into oblivian. It is a practice.
Even so, some people are assisted in their deaths in countries where euthanasia laws do not exist, and they are not charged. Usually because the authorities have no wish to be responsible for suffering.
It is the grandstanding of the issue which I object to. It is humiliating for the dying and serves only activists. Often the result of Euthanasia laws is that it isn't the terminally ill who die, or the suffering, but the lonely and deserted. This assertion is borne out by statistics of research conducted into surveying autopsies of those who have been euthanased.
Why would you possibly think a person who is suffering like that is being manipulated by activists? Who are you to decide who's interests are being served? Can you provide any evidence aside from thinking 'anonymous activists' are at work?
Also, what is the distinction between drugging someone into oblivion until they die and euthanasia? You effectively end their lives both ways. Just curious.
Lol anon, when I stop beating my wife, I'll be able to seriously answer that question.
Darn it, I'll have to get married first!
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sigh. Dr Phil says 80% of questions are statements, and yours seem disingenuous.
Evidence? Like there is a court case here? I thought this was a forum for discussion. Sorry I don't have any evidence. I guess I won't be able to prove to your satisfaction that it was wrong for Truman to have an atom bomb dropped on civilians on two separate occasions .. because I mislaid my evidence!
I guess that Chantal really seized her opportunity to have her disfiguring disease plastered over news services world wide. And it really was in her interests, wasn't it? To be public instead of private?
My mother took my sister through a peace march in the '70s and got tear gas for her efforts. The peace march achieved an end of a sort, and a corrupt communist nation has a people who endure much, wishing for a better future than their present. My mother made that choice, but I would argue she was also mislead by those activists who made the fake promise about peace. Chantal may have chosen to follow her path because she believed spokespeople who said rubbish about the virtue of death. Or, she may have been more directly influenced. I don't know. What I do know is she chose a very public, humiliating way to die and she would not benefit, but there are advocates who will. Quis Bono. Who has the bone?
I would agree with what you're saying if she had some lawyer speaking for her, but this woman, in her own words, begged for death. Whether or not she was being used as a "poster child" of sorts by activists, it was still rather cold of the French President to adviser her to seek a "second medical opinion" about her condition and then to tell her 'good day'.
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