Barcelona zoo: geriatric care for elephants

JEan-Charles Simon is a radio and television host, actor and director. He was also a national councilor (1995-1999).

The management of the end of life has undoubtedly become the most delicate societal question to be resolved for the citizens of today. Especially those of countries with the privilege of living in peace.

More than anywhere else, this political debate is obviously very agitated in France, where one continues to believe that everything can be resolved by a law, alas, often impossible to formulate, by historical incapacity to consensus.

Whether you are a believer or agnostic, doctor or patient, donor or heir, even young or old, we can probably all join on one point: when “it’s time, it’s time”.

But, it is the continuation of the famous Maxime (which we owe to the anarchist singer Montmartrois Jules Jouy) who poses a problem: “Before the hour, it’s not time, after the hour, it’s no longer time”.

And it is there that supporters of euthanasia, the right to die or palliative care tend to compete. All the more violently, of course, that they are less personally affected by the urgency of the problem. The former, without wanting to blame them by no means, might tend to anticipate the moment. The second, although having signed a contract, could forget to look at the big clock, even if it means losing their right to leave. And the third, to remain stuck in the dilemma, stated by André Malraux and taken up by Souchon: “Life is worth nothing, but nothing is worth life …”.

However, the news, often surprising, tells us that this difficult choice is now perhaps more reserved only in the human species.

Long before the real boom in antispecism, it was Stéphanie de Monaco who had one day stated, with a certain candor, during an interview that remained memorable: “After all, the animals are men like the others”. In this case, the animals of the zoos are getting closer.

Indeed, until then, they lived under the terrible jurisprudence of an article published on January 15, in the American journal of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) according to which the solution of zoos to manage their adult animals was to adopt that of nature: death, by “a planned and respectful slaughter of adults”, but after having allowed them to reproduce.

It was therefore with immense happiness that the friends of the animals, like Stéphanie de Monaco, learned last week, thanks to a report signed Euronews, that the resistance was organized against the PNAS. And that at the Barcelona zoo, in contradiction with the Doxa of specialists, aging animals which cannot be reintroduced into nature, in particular elephants, will be able to continue to live peacefully in an enlarged enclosure. And even receive specialized geriatric care.

My decision is made: if I was possible, where I had to become old day, I would like to be transferred to the Barcelona zoo. Even if it means signing on honor a renunciation of all contraception.