A 54-year-old woman suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis has warned the local health authority for having denied her access to assisted death on the basis that, in order to access it, according to the constitutional ruling ‘Dj Fabo’ one must be “kept alive by treatments life support”. The patient, totally paralyzed, had been prescribed Peg, or artificial nutrition, as she was constantly at risk of her life due to suffocation pneumonia. The patient had refused the insertion of the Peg, which she considered a therapeutic obstinacy to which she did not want to subject herself. The Luca Coscioni Association broke the news of the matter by announcing 4 new cases of people who, together with the Association’s legal team, coordinated by the National Secretary Filomena Gallo, have requested access to voluntary assisted death. “The right to refuse treatments, even life-saving ones, is provided for by art. 32 c.2 of the Constitution as well as by law 219/2017 – says Gallo -. The majority opinion of the competent Ethics Committee recognizes all the conditions established by the Council present. Also in case of refusal of the Peg, however, the clinical indication with the prescription of the Peg itself is sufficient to characterize the circumstances of a situation equivalent to those of the actual positioning of the same.
The Company Commission of the Tuscan health authority instead states that if the patient had accepted the PEG, then she would have had the right to assisted death, thus proposing the obligation to undergo a health treatment against her will and then be able to interrupt it. We consider these last statements to be very serious as they want to convey the message that in order to benefit from a constitutional right, one must undergo torture, or an invasive health treatment against one’s will”. Marco Cappato, treasurer of the Luca Coscioni Association, concludes: “The requirement of life-sustaining treatment in order to obtain aid in voluntary death also determines these situations of paradoxical and absurd violence that do nothing but amplify the suffering of those who are already in very serious irreversible or terminal conditions. Although the condition of the Tuscan patient is clear and the refusal of the health authority is in clear violation of her constitutional rights, the next ruling of the Constitutional Court will also be fundamental to definitively dissolve these illegitimate interpretations of the requirement”.
