Doctors switch off life support for patient after decade in move that has divided France

Doctors on Monday started shutting down the life support of a Frenchman who has been in a vegetative state for a decade prompting a right to die row that has split the patient’s family and France.

The decision has also prompted apparent criticism from the Pope.

The fate of Vincent Lambert, 42, who was left quadriplegic and with irreversible brain damage after a traffic accident in 2008, has also turned political as candidates for this weekend’s European elections clash over whether he should be kept alive.

The case has pitted his parents, devout Catholics, against Mr Lambert's wife and five siblings who argue he should be allowed to die, and who suggest that he had even expressed such a desire.

Doctors started switching off his life support at the Sebastopol Hospital in the northern French city of Reims following a final judicial ruling to halt nutrition and hydration. Without these, he could die "within days”, said medical sources.

Jean Paillot, the lawyer for Mr Lambert's parents, had said he would seek to reverse the decision at the Paris court of appeal and the criminal court of Reims.

The European Court of Human Rights on Monday rejected a last-ditch appeal, saying there were "no new elements" to the case that could lead it to reverse a previous ruling.

Vincent Sanchez, the doctor treating Mr Lambert, confirmed in a message to the family that the "halting of treatments" and "profound and continued sedation" had commenced.

He called on all parties to "rally around him so these moments are as peaceful, intimate and personal and possible”.

"They are monsters! Monsters!" said his mother Viviane, 73, outside the hospital on Monday. The previous day, she had organised a demonstration outside with her husband Pierre, 90.

Pope Francis on Monday also issued veiled criticism, saying that "those who live with severe illness" should have life protected until "its natural end".

"We pray for those who live with severe illness," the pope tweeted.

"Let us always safeguard life, God's gift, from its beginning until its natural end. Let us not give in to a throwaway culture."

However, Mr Lambert's wife Rachel, five of his siblings and his nephew Francois, have long been in favour of switching off life support to allow him to die, calling it the most humane outcome given his state.

French law authorises so-called "passive euthanasia" for seriously ill or injured patients with no chance of recovery by cutting off life support while placing them in continuous deep sedation.

After multiple appeals, France’s State Council last month backed Dr Sanchez’s decision despite a non-binding call by a UN committee on disabled rights to wait until it had conducted its own investigation.

The case’s sudden denouement has sparked political ructions in France ahead of the May 26 EU elections.

Francois-Xavier Bellamy, who leads the list of the mainstream Right party, The Republicans, said he "could not understand the hurry" and called on President Emmanuel Macron to suspend the decision. It would, he added, have repercussions on the 1,500 other patients in similar situations in France.

Mr Macron responded on Facebook, saying that while he was "deeply moved" by Mr Lambert's case: "As President, it is not for me to suspend decisions that are for doctors to decide and that are in accordance with our laws."