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Changes were necessary, said President François Hollande
France's medical ethics council moved a step closer to legalising euthanasia today by ruling that assisted suicide should exceptionally be allowed when ailing patients make "persistent, lucid and repeated requests" to end their life.

Using the term "assisted death" rather than euthanasia, the council invoked a "duty to humanity" to allow a patient "suffering from an ailment for which the treatment has become ineffective" to die.

A medical team, not a sole doctor, would take the decision.

The council's conclusions came after President François Hollande asked it to examine the precise circumstances under which such steps could be authorised, with a view to tabling draft legislation by June.

Changes were necessary, he said, as, "the existing legislation does not meet the legitimate concerns expressed by people who are gravely and incurably ill".

A 2005 law already authorises doctors to administer painkilling drugs at levels they know will, as a secondary effect, shorten a patient's life.

"However, the law can offer no solution to certain cases of prolonged agony or to psychological and/or physical pain that, despite the means employed, remain uncontrollable," said the council.

In these rare cases, the patient should be allowed to be administered "suitable, deep and terminal sedation", it said.

A report recently handed to the council found that there was widespread dissatisfaction among terminally ill patients and their families over a "cure at all costs" culture in the medical establishment.

It had called for doctors to be allowed to take moves to hasten death for terminal patients in three specific sets of circumstances.

In the first case, the patient issues an explicit request or gives advance instructions in the event of him or her becoming incapable of expressing an opinion.

The second case envisages medical teams withdrawing treatment following a request by the family of a dying and unconscious patient.

The third would apply to cases where treatment is serving only to sustain life artificially.

The author of the report, Professor Didier Sicard, stressed that he did not support any measures which "suddenly and prematurely end life".

"We are radically opposed to inscribing euthanasia in law," he said.

He also came out against Swiss-style clinics where people are provided with lethal medication to enable them to end their own lives.

There about 3,000 euthanasia cases in France annually on average, all of them illegal, according to France's national demographics council.