End of life: Alain Cocq stops his second healthcare and hunger strike

Alain Cocq, a "dignified" end-of-life activist suffering from an incurable disease, has stopped the second hunger strike and treatment he began on Monday after a brief hospitalization, associations announced on Friday.

"Like the first time, he was hospitalized at his request and resumed his treatment, food and hydration," François Lambert, president of the "article 10" association, in regular contact with AFP told AFP. Alain Cocq.

"Like the first time, he could not endure" the suffering which is accentuated when the treatment ceases, explained Jean-Luc Romero, president of the Association for the right to die with dignity (ADMD), which is also in contact with Alain Cocq. 

"His condition is very bad"

At the beginning of September, Alain Cocq had already ceased a first strike for healthcare and hunger, which he had started three days previously, citing "unbearable pain" which had convinced him to request hospitalization.

"My state of health is deteriorating rapidly," he said in a brief text to AFP, specifying that he is currently back at his home in Dijon, in his medical bed.

"His condition is very altered. He is very tired, very weak," adds François Lambert, nephew of Vincent Lambert, a nurse in a vegetative state who died in July 2019 after deep sedation disputed by part of the family. 

Alain Cocq, who suffers from a very painful orphan disease, began his second health and hunger strike on Monday, assuring that he wanted to go "to the end" this time while, during the first strike in early September, his hospitalization had caused the resumption of his care and his diet.

So that this does not happen again, he had had the help of François Lambert, lawyer, to write his last wishes which meant that, even if he asked for his hospitalization, "that did not mean" that he "wanted to live. "but that he wanted" to benefit from a deep and continuous sedation ", until death.

"But the hospital did not offer him deep sedation," said the lawyer.

Suffering from an "altered conscience", Alain Cocq was not in a position to ask for it either.

Go to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is allowed

"My directives, they sat on it," protested Alain Cocq, joined by AFP.

"The doctor does not want to let the patients speak," he added, saying his intention, henceforth, to go to Switzerland where assisted suicide is authorized.

Alain Cocq, 57, believes that he no longer has a "dignified" life because of a very painful illness that keeps him in bed.

He had asked in vain, in August, to Emmanuel Macron to authorize, on a compassionate basis, the medical profession to prescribe him pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate which would have allowed him to "leave in peace".

The head of state refused, saying "he cannot ask anyone to go beyond our current legal framework".