California Medical Association issues guidelines for assisted suicide law

With just months until the state's assisted suicide law goes into effect, the California Medical Association has issued guidelines to doctors on writing prescriptions of lethal doses of medication for terminally ill patients. The 15-page guide released Tuesday outlines the complicated legal and medical steps that physicians must take before they can authorize drugs to hasten a patient's death, the Los Angeles Times reported. It also helps physicians understand their legal rights to participate or not participate based on their own moral or religious values. "We are starting to get a lot of questions both from our members, the individual physicians, but also the public," said Francisco Silva, general counsel of the medical association.