WHILE MANY PATIENTS wage difficult and poignant battles to overcome disease and hang on to their lives, others seek a different form of relief: death. Their struggles can be every bit as difficult and touching as those of patients fighting for life. People with terminal diseases (that is, diseases for which there is no cure and that lead to death), conditions that cause terrible physical pain, or illnesses that are severely debilitating, sometimes want to end their lives. This desire becomes a matter of medical ethics when a patient seeks a doctor's assistance in dying.

Doctors and others in the medical field normally work to save lives, not to end them. As the AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs has stated, "Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer... ." The AMA's view, which is also the view of many lawmakers...