Critique of The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine "Position on Physician Assisted Death"

Wesley Smith has written a critique in the Weekly Standard about the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine's "Position Statement on Physician Assisted Death." To read it visit: First, Do Harm . . .:
Smith writes:
"The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine has just released a position statement on the issue of physician-assisted suicide, in which it abdicates its core professional responsibility. On the impropriety of permitting doctors to help kill their patients, the association has assumed a position of 'studied neutrality.'

One of the AAHPM's stated missions is to engage in 'public policy advocacy' for hospice and palliative care. Assuming a neutral stance on what may be the most important public policy controversy of our day involving dying people is both a cowardly act and a backdoor repudiation of the long-established philosophy of hospice care, which promises to respect the intrinsic value of each patient's life and to care for dying patients until their natural deaths."