People will find just about anything to argue about these days, especially online, but something as complex and controversial as the right to death for a man with irreparable brain damage is always going to bring with it a healthy dose of controversy.

38-year-old Vincent Lambert suffered an accident in 2008 that rendered him a quadriplegic. His wife and six of his siblings have campaigned for his right to die and the European Court of Human Rights granted them their wish last week. This angered Vincent’s devout Catholic parents who took to YouTube. This below from the Independent:

…some of his friends and relatives posted a video on YouTube, which seemed to show him responding to their voices with varying facial expressions.

Mr Lambert’s doctors, his wife and other family members who think that he should be allowed to die, accused those behind the video of “manipulation”.

You can watch snippets of that video HERE but I’ll just quote from the Independent article again:

The clip showed Mr Lambert, quadriplegic since the accident in 2008, moving his eyes and changing his expressions in reaction to voices. But experts said the clip was meaningless. “If you had read out the telephone directory, he would have responded the same,” said Dr Bernard Devalois, an authority on end-of-life care.

Lambert’s parents continue to fight the European Court of Human Rights’ decision having gathered much public support in the wake of the video going public.

I guess that puts the arguments you used to have with your folks over who controlled the TV remote into perspective.

[source:independent&bbc]