The most recent citizens’ initiative in Oregon was not opposed by the state’s medical association, perhaps because it called for assisted death via prescriptions only and not euthanasia actively performed by physicians.
The most recent citizens’ initiative in Oregon was not opposed by the state’s medical association, perhaps because it called for assisted death via prescriptions only and not euthanasia actively performed by physicians. By contrast, the American Medical Association, to which only about half of all American physicians belong, has fought over the years against any efforts that could place controls over medical practice or jeopardize the income or status of its members (Universal Health Insurance, the establishment of a public health service and syphilis clinics, mandatory innoculation against polio, etc.) or the myth of physicians as healers. This position will change when the right laws are authored that can preserve the image of physicians and protect them from any possibility of malpractice suits, or when these professional groups are forced to create their own model guidelines in response to court decisions or further successful initiatives by voters. This is inevitable given the public demand for change and the fact that more than half of physicians surveyed now want some form of legalized aid-in-dying for the terminally ill.
