OPPOSITION TO ASSISTING SUICIDE REMAINS AMA POLICY

The American Medical Association House of Delegates, at its June 2003 annual meeting in Chicago, failed to adopt a resolution proposed by the Wisconsin Medical Association that would have effectively reversed its longstanding position that assisting suicide is not a legitimate medical practice.  Instead, the committee to which the resolution was referred offered a substitute resolution focusing on protecting physicians who appropriately prescribe pain management, without any mention of policy on assisting suicide – and the House of Delegates adopted the substitute resolution.

The AMA has long opposed legalizing euthanasia.  Its formal policy states, “Physician assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.” 

In November 2001, the AMA endorsed Attorney General John Ashcroft’s ruling that assisting suicide is not a “legitimate medical practice,” with the consequence that under federal law federally controlled narcotics and other dangerous drugs may not be used to assist suicide.  (The ruling is not in effect, pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging it.)  “Physicians have a fundamental obligation to ‘do no harm,’ and the AMA has consistently held that physician-assisted suicide falls outside the realm of legitimate medical practice,” Dr. Yank Coble, then AMA President-Elect, said.  “We see nothing in this decision to concern physicians committed to aggressive pain treatment at the end of life.”

Since then, the twice-yearly meetings of AMA delegates have seen repeated attempts to pass resolutions reversing this position and putting the AMA on record in opposition to the Ashcroft Directive.  To date, all have failed.

“The AMA’s retention of its anti-euthanasia policy is in significant part attributable to the repeated mobilization of grass-roots pro-lifers, and especially pro-life physicians, who have urged delegates not to betray the medical profession’s long history of protecting vulnerable life,” said Burke J. Balch, J.D., Director of the National Right to Life Committee Department of Medical Ethics.  “We must, however, remain vigilant, since this is not likely to be the last attempt to subvert the medical profession’s stance as a critical bulwark against the legalization of euthanasia.”