Opposition to resisting suicide remains AMA policy.(American Medical Association maintains position on assisting suicide)

Still another attempt to reverse the American Medical Associ-ation's (AMA) long-standing position that assisting suicide is not a legitimate medical practice was thwarted last month. The AMA House of Delegates, at its annual meeting in Chicago, adopted a substitute resolution in place of one offered by the Wisconsin Medical Association that would have effectively reversed the AMA's anti-assisting suicide policy.

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 a policy on assisting suicide. The House of Delegates adopted this substitute resolution June 26.

The AMA's own house newspaper outlined the issue's significance in a story published on the eve of the vote: "Passage would signal a startling change of past AMA policy, which has been staunchly against assisted suicide."

Indeed, 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."

The defeated resolution took aim at Attorney General John Ashcroft's 2001 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.

In November 2001, the AMA endorsed Ashcroft's ruling. (The ruling is not currently 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 in 2001. "We see nothing in this decision to concern physicians committed to aggressive pain treatment at the end of life."