PROFILE: The story of Vincent Lambert, the man at the centre of France's bitter right-to-die case
The life of Vincent Lambert, the severely brain-damaged French patient who became the face of the right-to-die campaign finally came to an end on Thursday. Here's his story.
Before, he was a rebellious teenager who became a psychiatric nurse in France, but then suffered brain damage in a road accident.
Today, Vincent Lambert is the silent presence at the heart of an emotional right-to-die case that finally came to an end on Thursday just days after doctors removed his life support.
He had just turned 32 and had recently become a father when his life was changed forever by a car crash in 2008 near his home in the northeastern French town of Chalons-en-Champagne.
In a vegetative state for the past 11 years, his fate had been the subject of a long-running legal battle between his deeply Catholic parents, who wanted to keep him alive, and his wife Rachel, who believes he should have the right to die with dignity.
His eight siblings have also been pulled into the fray, with six of them backing his wife, and two others supporting his parents in a tussle over passive euthanasia that has made headlines in France and beyond.
"He is minimally conscious but he is not a vegetable," his mother Viviane pleaded last week in a desperate last-ditch appeal to the UN's top rights body after France's highest appeal court said his life support could be halted.
But for his wife, the fight is about what Lambert himself would want: "Keeping him artificially alive and totally dependent? For him, that would be unacceptable," she has said.
Before the accident, Lambert was a thrill-seeker who loved to party and was once expelled from school, family members told AFP.
"He sometimes went to extremes, but at the same time he was secretive, withdrawn and ill-at-ease," younger sister Marie once said in an interview with AFP.
Hardly surprising, coming from a large family of nine children, which his nephew Francois Lambert described as "riddled with secrets and things left unspoken".
Catholic school reject
On September 20, 1976, he was the first child born to Vivianne and Pierre Lambert. When his parents met, his father was a gynaecologist and active anti-abortion campaigner, who had two children before falling for Vivianne, who was his secretary at the time.
She was a mother-of-three and 16 years his junior.
Devoutly Catholic, the pair eventually got married and went on to have four children of their own, with Vincent the sixth out of a total of nine children.
Like the rest of his siblings, Lambert was sent at 12 to a strict Catholic boarding school in southwest France, but was thrown out because of his "rebellious spirit". He went on to finish his studies in the northwestern city of Reims.
"Since then he has always distanced himself from our parents' ideology, like most of us," Marie said.
Qui était Vincent, l'homme derrière l'affaire Lambert ?
➡ Portrait de cet infirmier en psychiatrie à l'enfance compliquée, enfant issu d'une liaison au sein d'une famille de neuf enfants https://t.co/sXCOHb7opY pic.twitter.com/K3s75gRiNa
— Le Parisien (@le_Parisien) 11 July 2019
After school, he studied nursing with a specialising in psychiatry, which took him to various hospitals in the region where he met Rachel, also a nurse.
They married in 2007.
Barely 18 months later, when his daughter was just two months old, Lambert was out driving when he got caught up in a near-fatal road accident in Chalons-en-Champagne where they were living.
'One of the living dead'
What exactly happened remains unclear, but he was rushed in critical condition to the intensive care unit in Reims where doctors found him to have suffered irreversible brain damage, leaving him a tetraplegic.
And he never left.
Over the years, his family saw his condition deteriorate, his muscles waste away, a grimace on his face.
During his time as a nurse, Lambert often said he would never want to be "artificially kept alive", those close to him say, but he never put anything down on paper.
"Vincent would never have wanted to live in such a diminished and dependent state," his sister Marie told AFP five years ago.
"He is already one of the living dead and for what?"
'Emotional memory'
Dr Eric Kariger, who at the time was head of the hospital's palliative care unit, said medical staff had never been able to communicate with him, even briefly.
Although experts acknowledge he had a capacity for sensory expressions, like smiling or shedding tears, they describe it as the result of "emotional memory".
"His body expresses things, mainly suffering, but he is not conscious of his physical body," his doctor has said.
His 73-year-old mother, and his father, 90 said that removing his feeding tube would amount to "murder".
Now 38, Rachel Lambert has moved to live in Belgium after coming under repeated attack online over her stance.
She has an 11-year-old daughter and has written a book about her experience, entitled, "Because I love him, I want to let him go."
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Before, he was a rebellious teenager who became a psychiatric nurse in France, but then suffered brain damage in a road accident.
Today, Vincent Lambert is the silent presence at the heart of an emotional right-to-die case that finally came to an end on Thursday just days after doctors removed his life support.
He had just turned 32 and had recently become a father when his life was changed forever by a car crash in 2008 near his home in the northeastern French town of Chalons-en-Champagne.
In a vegetative state for the past 11 years, his fate had been the subject of a long-running legal battle between his deeply Catholic parents, who wanted to keep him alive, and his wife Rachel, who believes he should have the right to die with dignity.
His eight siblings have also been pulled into the fray, with six of them backing his wife, and two others supporting his parents in a tussle over passive euthanasia that has made headlines in France and beyond.
"He is minimally conscious but he is not a vegetable," his mother Viviane pleaded last week in a desperate last-ditch appeal to the UN's top rights body after France's highest appeal court said his life support could be halted.
But for his wife, the fight is about what Lambert himself would want: "Keeping him artificially alive and totally dependent? For him, that would be unacceptable," she has said.
Before the accident, Lambert was a thrill-seeker who loved to party and was once expelled from school, family members told AFP.
"He sometimes went to extremes, but at the same time he was secretive, withdrawn and ill-at-ease," younger sister Marie once said in an interview with AFP.
Hardly surprising, coming from a large family of nine children, which his nephew Francois Lambert described as "riddled with secrets and things left unspoken".
Catholic school reject
On September 20, 1976, he was the first child born to Vivianne and Pierre Lambert. When his parents met, his father was a gynaecologist and active anti-abortion campaigner, who had two children before falling for Vivianne, who was his secretary at the time.
She was a mother-of-three and 16 years his junior.
Devoutly Catholic, the pair eventually got married and went on to have four children of their own, with Vincent the sixth out of a total of nine children.
Like the rest of his siblings, Lambert was sent at 12 to a strict Catholic boarding school in southwest France, but was thrown out because of his "rebellious spirit". He went on to finish his studies in the northwestern city of Reims.
"Since then he has always distanced himself from our parents' ideology, like most of us," Marie said.
Qui était Vincent, l'homme derrière l'affaire Lambert ?
— Le Parisien (@le_Parisien) 11 July 2019
➡ Portrait de cet infirmier en psychiatrie à l'enfance compliquée, enfant issu d'une liaison au sein d'une famille de neuf enfants https://t.co/sXCOHb7opY pic.twitter.com/K3s75gRiNa
After school, he studied nursing with a specialising in psychiatry, which took him to various hospitals in the region where he met Rachel, also a nurse.
They married in 2007.
Barely 18 months later, when his daughter was just two months old, Lambert was out driving when he got caught up in a near-fatal road accident in Chalons-en-Champagne where they were living.
'One of the living dead'
What exactly happened remains unclear, but he was rushed in critical condition to the intensive care unit in Reims where doctors found him to have suffered irreversible brain damage, leaving him a tetraplegic.
And he never left.
Over the years, his family saw his condition deteriorate, his muscles waste away, a grimace on his face.
During his time as a nurse, Lambert often said he would never want to be "artificially kept alive", those close to him say, but he never put anything down on paper.
"Vincent would never have wanted to live in such a diminished and dependent state," his sister Marie told AFP five years ago.
"He is already one of the living dead and for what?"
'Emotional memory'
Dr Eric Kariger, who at the time was head of the hospital's palliative care unit, said medical staff had never been able to communicate with him, even briefly.
Although experts acknowledge he had a capacity for sensory expressions, like smiling or shedding tears, they describe it as the result of "emotional memory".
"His body expresses things, mainly suffering, but he is not conscious of his physical body," his doctor has said.
His 73-year-old mother, and his father, 90 said that removing his feeding tube would amount to "murder".
Now 38, Rachel Lambert has moved to live in Belgium after coming under repeated attack online over her stance.
She has an 11-year-old daughter and has written a book about her experience, entitled, "Because I love him, I want to let him go."
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