CMA Doctors Lament Assisted Suicide Ruling.

News Editors/Assignment Desks/Health/Medical Writers

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 27, 2004

The nation's largest faith-based association of physicians today lamented a federal court ruling that prevents the U.S. Attorney General from enforcing the Controlled Substances Act to prevent the illegal use of drugs in assisted suicide.

A slim majority decision of the U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit keeps the door open for continued use in Oregon of otherwise federally controlled narcotics for assisted suicide. The decision drew the fire of dissenting Judge J. Clifford Wallace, who noted that because Attorney General John Ashcroft had interpreted an agency regulation, rather than the Controlled Substances Act itself, the court should have deferred to the Attorney General's interpretation.

"In an all-too-familiar scenario, activist judges have thwarted the clear intent of the law and the constitutional balance of powers," noted David Stevens, M.D., Executive Director of the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association (www.cmawashington.org). "The result is putting deadly drugs into the hands of physicians who will use them not to heal or to relieve pain, but simply to kill. This is not medicine; this is not compassion; it is killing."

Stevens continued, "What we need is not more power for doctors who use drugs to kill their patients, but more power for doctors who use drugs to heal and comfort their patients. The whole reason the federal government regulates controlled substances is to prevent their use for harmful purposes. I can't think of any greater harm than to use the drugs to kill."

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