Argentine Supreme Court recognizes the right of every patient to a dignified death.
Source: Télam
The Supreme Court of Argentina ensured that a patient's will be respected so that measures that have artificially prolonged his life 20 years can be suspended - a "unique case" in national law, judicial sources emphasized.
Regarding the implementation of the resolution, the Court stressed the importance that, in enforcing the patient's will and proceeding in the withdrawal of life support, "all the precautions necessary for adequate control and relief of the patient's suffering shall be adopted."
The Court confirmed the decision of the Superior Court of the Province of Neuquén, in the application filed by the sister of the patient. As a result of a car accident, the patient has been bedridden since 1995, with a serious and severe frontal lobe lesions in the temporal and occipital lobes. To resolve the issue, the Court commissioned studies to the Favaloro Foundation (Buenos Aires), which corroborated the "irreversible" and "incurable" condition of the patient.
"It is indisputable that the patient is a person in the sense that their fundamental rights must be protected without discrimination and, therefore, has the right to full self-determination to decide to both receive the necessary services as well as to cease medical treatment," said the Court.
"No other branch of government, institution, or person other than the patient can decide whether his life as it is today, is worth living," the Court added.
The court, however, clarified that this is not a case of euthanasia.
"In cases of euthanasia one must act to disrupt life, whereas in this case there is therapeutic abstention," said the Court. With its characteristics, this is "a unique case" in national jurisprudence and with but a single precedent worldwide, "Lambert vs. France."
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