AMA continues to oppose your rights

Spotlight on the AMA

Doctors and the public have a right to ask legitimate questions of the AMA. Firstly, what was the likelihood of a real change to the AMA's entrenched opposition toward doctor participation in assisted dying?

Secondly, given the AMA's entrenched opposition, how can it expect its demands to be consulted about any potential law reform to be treated seriously? If assisted dying is nothing to do with doctors, why is what doctors think relevant?

Utterly resistant to change?

At its 2016 AGM, AMA member Dr Harry Hemley noted that the AMA largely represented its more hard-core, long-term older members and warned of the AMA's increasing irrelevance and impotence. He moved an urgency motion to commission a review and report with "recommendations for a plan, vision and determination that will lead to re-invigorating and sustaining the AMA."

Figure 2: Dr Harry Hemley speaks to his urgency motion to investigate organisational reform

Note that the motion wasn't in relation to an actual or particular reform, but merely to investigate reform and to provide a strategic report for consideration.

The motion was defeated. The future doesn't look rosy for the AMA.

Conclusion

The AMA is deeply out of touch with Australians on the issue of assisted dying. It represents fewer than a third of Australian doctors and has failed to respect the very range of perspectives it obtained by consulting its members. It further strains its credibility by insisting that doctors must not be involved in assisted dying, yet demanding to be consulted on any law reform to permit it.

If the AMA is to become relevant to contemporary society it must move on from the 'old boy' approach to medicine and adopt a stance of neutrality toward assisted dying. Only neutrality will demonstrate respect for the true range of respectable views amongst Australian doctors.