In October the American Medical Association’s Ethics Committee, following at least its third extensive study, advised the association to maintain its long-standing opposition to assisted suicide.
Here is a news story by Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2018/10/american-medical-association-ethics.html.
Here is the original ethics committee report, making it clear that the committee finds nothing in the twenty-one year history of legal assisted suicide in the US, or in data from Europe, to change its opinion that assisted suicide is dangerous: https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/default/files/media-browser/public/hod/i18-ceja2.pdf.
The ethics committee drew its conclusion after carefully and repeatedly weighing the evidence. Its recommendation is remarkable, since it came after the association’s House of Delegates rejected last year’s identical ethics committee advice, instead directing the committee to study the issue yet again. It also came less than two weeks after the association’s second largest constituent group, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), voted by a two thirds majority to adopt a position of “studied neutrality” on physician assisted suicide and announced its intention to lobby the larger group to adopt the same position.
The full AMA House of Delegates’ meeting convenes on November 12. Members will vote on whether to accept the ethics committee’s recommendation or succumb to the emotions roused by pro-suicide stories; the latter dominated last year’s AMA meeting and have been used in the past to prevail over reason, including, apparently, in the decision-making of AAFP.
Please, all physicians opposed to assisted suicide, and everyone else too, write immediately to elliott.crigger@ama-assn.org. In a civil and reasonable way, including giving him your reasons why, let him know of your opposition to assisted suicide and ask that the AMA continue its stated opposition to it.