Karlsruhe (dpa) – For many in the corona pandemic, it is a horror scenario when doctors have to give up patients in the event of treatment bottlenecks – but there will be no state requirements for the decision between life and death for the time being.
The Federal Constitutional Court rejected an urgent application by several plaintiffs with disabilities and previous illnesses, as announced on Friday in Karlsruhe. They wanted to enforce the binding regulation of the so-called triage. Your constitutional complaint is still pending. (Az. 1 BvR 1541/20)
If a large number of people are infected at the same time, there is a risk that there will not be space in the intensive care unit for all seriously ill. For example, ventilators could become scarce. Doctors would then have to decide who to save and who not. The technical term for this is triage. It comes from the French verb “trier”, which means “sort” or “choose”.
There have been such bad scenes in Italy and Spain. Germany has been spared so far. In the event that this should happen, several medical societies have jointly developed recommendations. The decisive criterion should then be which patient has the greater chance of survival. Classification according to age, previous illnesses or disabilities should expressly not be allowed.
The nine plaintiffs fear that in an emergency, they will still fall by the wayside. Statistically, they would have a worse chance of survival. With their constitutional lawsuit, they want the legislature to set the decision-making criteria. Provisions for the meantime should come from a body in which disabled people are also represented. The plaintiffs wanted to force it to be set up with the urgent motion.
But the judges do not allow themselves to be driven. The constitutional complaint raised difficult questions that could not be answered quickly, the court said. There is also no great hurry: the spread of the disease and the utilization of intensive care units make it unlikely at the moment that a triage situation will occur. The decision was made in mid-July – since then the number of infected people has increased again.
Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) has spoken out against government guidelines. “There is no need for legislative action on these medical-ethical questions,” his ministry replied to the Greens in the Bundestag in April, referring to the guidelines of the specialist societies and a recommendation by the German Ethics Council.
However, the authors of the guideline also support the plaintiffs’ demand for a legal basis. The legal uncertainty is an unreasonable burden for the medical profession, according to a recently published announcement by the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).
The plaintiff’s attorney Oliver Tolmein stated that the court had “made it clear that it sees the far-reaching significance of these issues”. The legislature should “not simply duck back and rely on the affected people with disabilities and the medical treatment teams who are subject to decision-making constraints to resolve these conflicts among themselves.”
Eugen Brysch from the German Foundation for Patient Protection said that the Bundestag is now obliged to issue ethical rules. “Because only the MPs have the right to make binding legislative decisions.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200814-99-166433 / 4
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