Stricken with ALS, Charles Biétry will be able to die in France

Charles Biétry, former head of sports at Canal+ and Paris Saint-Germain president in 1998, will not go to Switzerland to die after all. The National Assembly’s vote in favour of a bill on the right to die last Wednesday has changed his plans.

Stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Charcot’s disease — which he publicly revealed in April 2023, Biétry had initially planned to resort to assisted suicide in Switzerland, accompanied by his wife Monique and his two children François and Juliette. “I will not die in Switzerland. We were all going together. Monique, François, Juliette would come back alone with my ashes,” he said in a message posted on X.

The law voted by the National Assembly must still be examined by the Constitutional Council before being enacted. Its effective implementation is expected in early 2027.

Biétry recently described the weight of this process during a Radio France podcast, speaking through a computer and artificial intelligence reproducing his voice: “It’s not simple to make such a decision. You have to register with an organisation in Switzerland, read the documentation, choose a method and, there, you really feel death hovering around you. But we control it, we choose it.”

Charcot’s disease is a neurodegenerative condition whose duration can vary from a few months to several years. On average less than four years, it leads to death within three years of the first clinical manifestations in 50% of cases.