PARIS — One French court acquitted a doctor of poisoning seven terminally ill patients while another ordered physicians to suspend treatment for a comatose man, while Britain’s top court said the country’s ban on assisted suicide may be incompatible with human rights.

The decisions of the past few days are fueling the arguments of Europeans who say the duty of doctors is to end the suffering of those beyond treatment.

But emotions run high on all sides around the issue of euthanasia and assisted suicide, as is shown by the bitter case of the comatose Frenchman, Vincent Lambert. Hours after the French court sided with his wife in ordering an end to treatment, the European Court of Human Rights blocked the move at the request of his parents, in a rare late-night ruling.

The prosecution in France of Dr. Nicolas Bonnemaison was relatively unusual as well. The physician never denied giving seven terminally ill patients lethal injections, and some of their families testified on his behalf.

Bonnemaison’s lawyer said he hoped Wednesday’s acquittal – and Tuesday’s ruling in the case of Lambert – would force the government to update the law quickly.

“There are no heroes here, no martyrs,” said Benoit Ducos-Ader. “This man acted as a doctor. He always acknowledged that, shouted that, despite the blows he received.”

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Euthanasia is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg for patients whose suffering is “unbearable.” France’s president has said he wants to make it easier for some terminally ill patients to request medical help to end their lives in the majority-Catholic country.

Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain, although rarely prosecuted. Wednesday’s ruling from the British Supreme Court was unexpectedly far-reaching. Although it dismissed the appeal from two severely disabled men who argued the law should be changed to allow doctors to legally kill them, a majority of judges suggested that Parliament change the law to be in line with human rights guarantees.

“It’s the strongest thing they could do” short of overturning the law, said Penney Lewis, a law professor at King’s College in London.

One of the men who brought the case, Paul Lamb, is paralyzed following a car accident. The other, Tony Nicklinson, suffered from “locked-in syndrome” following a stroke. He died of pneumonia in 2012, but the case has been taken over by his widow.

A measure up for debate this summer in Britain’s House of Lords would ease the ability of patients to choose their manner of death.

In the case decided Wednesday, the patients had argued in favor of a device invented in Australia. Doctors would hook up a terminally ill patient to the device and the patients themselves would choose when and how to deliver a lethal drug.

Lewis said the British case and the acquittal of Bonnemaison followed a trend of broadening legal acceptance for euthanasia and assisted suicide.


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