The Supreme Court has twice maintained that that’s a medical question and as such should be left to the states, which regulate medical practice. The medical profession, meanwhile, has been among the main obstacles to more laws like Oregon’s. The American Medical Association’s official policy is that physician-assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.” Sixty-five percent of New England Journal of Medicine readers who responded to an online poll last year were against it. One possible explanation for this opposition, particularly among palliative care specialists, is that assisted dying underscores their limitations in dealing with suffering at the end of life.