Word: bires
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Doctors with intimate knowledge of the case tell TIME that though extremely rare, the esthesioneuroblastoma disease Sébire suffered from is now routinely controlled through early detection and surgical removal of the tumors from the nasal vault. Through such operations, specialists say, patients typically go on to lead relatively normal lives. Yet after the disease was diagnosed as the cause of her repeated nose bleeds in 2002, Sébire rejected proposals of surgical intervention - and subsequently turned down the palliative services and pain-masking medication doctors offered. It was only after her tumors had grown too large...
...From the moment she refused surgical treatment, growth of the tumors to their ultimate terminal phase was a given," says Jean-Louis Béal, head of the palliative service at the University Hospital Center in Dijon, who repeatedly advised Sébire undergo treatment for the disease and the pain it brought on. Béal says specialists in at least three French hospitals offered Sébire an operation with a relatively good chance of success - upwards of 70% full success in most cases - though they couldn't promise no potential risk of death or incapacity, which...
...Polls taken two weeks before Sébire's suicide (which is being investigated for possible third-party assistance) showed a significant backing for the legalizing of euthanasia for terminal patients. Sébire's public struggle for the right to die doubtlessly played a big part in this figure of 87%. But it's legitimate to wonder whether her appeal would have received such support had reports fully brought to light Sébire's rejection of surgery -or the use of medication to bring on its advance...
...That question of her personal decision in dealing with her disease early on in no way alters her right to a dignified death later in life, argues Emmanuel Debost, a general practitioner who treated and supported Sébire even before her fatal disease was diagnosed. "It also tries to discredit that right to a dignified end by suggesting my patient was somehow guilty in the terminal evolution of her disease...
...Physician and leading member of the French National Consultative Committee on Ethics, Axel Kahn, acknowledges there are "several incoherent aspects" to Sébire's attitude towards treatment and demands for an administered death. Still, Kahn isn't sure full disclosure of her case would have changed opinion of her plight. "Public response to her condition and plea for euthanasia was compassionate and emotional," Kahn says. "Hard ethical analysis of whether her own peculiar decisions dealing with her disease undermined her request for death involves rational conclusion. Rarely in our world will the rational win out over the emotional...