END OF LIFE: FRANCE AT THE TIME OF CHOICE

Abstract

The Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE)
advocates increasing the provision of palliative care and
authorising the patient to ask the physician, in strictly defined
and supervised conditions, for “expressly lethal sedation”.
If the arguments for the part justifying the increase in the
provision of palliative care are well presented and there is no
cause for discussion, the concept of “expressly lethal sedation”
appears to have little foundation on the one hand, and to
be a source of possible semantic confusion with potentially
serious consequences.