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It was an emotional moment for my friend and for me. As we sat in the living room of her home in California, she told me that the breast cancer that had been responding to treatment for several years had spread throughout her body. “It’s everywhere now,” she said, adding without a trace of self-pity: “I have less than six months to live. I’m so grateful that I won’t have to spend my last days or weeks in extreme agony.” (Diane Rehm, 6/7)

The American Medical Association House of Delegates in Chicago will soon engage in a critical debate over the report of the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs concerning the practice of assisted suicide. For almost 30 years, pro-assisted suicide organizations have been lobbying for legalized assisted suicide throughout the USA. This practice involves a physician prescribing a non-FDA approved lethal overdose of drugs to a person believed to have a terminal illness. In 2016, the AMA charged the CEJA with reevaluating the AMA’s ethical position, issued in 1994, in opposition to the legalization and practice of assisted suicide. The current AMA position states that 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.” (Joseph E. Marine, 6/8)