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Thread: Doctors at an Execution? Medical Ethics Says No

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Doctors at an Execution? Medical Ethics Says No

    To the Editor:

    Re “Executions Need Doctors” (Op-Ed, April 22):

    Dr. Sandeep Jauhar argues that “physician presence at executions is consistent with our mandate to alleviate suffering.” I disagree. His opinion isn’t just at odds with the American Medical Association; it is also fundamentally at odds with core medical ethics.

    As individuals, physicians can have their own positions on the death penalty, but nothing about an execution is a medical procedure. It is a form of punishment that in the United States is overwhelmingly carried out unjustly.

    While Dr. Jauhar argues that a physician may be able to alleviate suffering during an execution, the presence of a physician lends false credibility and a veneer of humanity to a practice that is anything but credible or humane.

    Even physicians who choose to help terminally ill patients end their own lives are keeping faith with the dying. Nothing about assisting in the death penalty could possibly be construed as keeping faith with the condemned.

    After the horrors carried out by Nazi doctors during World War II, the World Medical Association affirmed that doctors must “maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning even under threat.” Doctors are trusted to act in the best interests of their patients, and participating in an execution fundamentally violates that trust.

    KERRY J. SULKOWICZ, NEW YORK

    The writer, a psychiatrist, is chairman of the board of directors, Physicians for Human Rights.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/o...s-says-no.html
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    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    One thing I've never understood is that states don't hire doctors who have lost their licenses to practice medicine to superintend executions. A fair percentage of such doctors are boozers or druggies, but there are some otherwise competent doctors who have lost their licenses, yet still retain enough judgment and medical acumen to handle executions.

    Does the Hippocratic Oath or Osteopathic Oath apply even to doctors who have lost their licenses? Is either or both a lifetime deal?

    Also, there is one class of personnel who are as highly medically trained as M.D.s or D.O.s, and that is veterinarians. They don't take the HO or the OO. All these people would need is a few med school courses, and they'd be just as competent as an M.D. or a D.O. for the purpose of executions.

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    Senior Member Member ted75601's Avatar
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    There is actually no need to have a physician of any sort at an execution. Both nurses and paramedics are trained to start IV's, run fluids and give medications. I, myself, am a paramedic who spent many years doing just that in the back of an ambulance while bouncing down a bumpy road. In my experience, doctors rarely do anything like that once they complete their training. The doctor may give the order to start the procedure but 99.9% of the time it's just that - an order for someone else to do it. Think of your own experience. The physician is ultimately responsible but any time you visit a hospital or clinic, it is always the nurse or medical tech that actually does the work

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    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    ted75601, I agree. It's the nurse-types and paramedic-types who do most of the "heavy lifting" in non-execution settings. And my hat is off to them for doing just that, sometimes in difficult situations.

    But so many of the condemned are not in the best physical condition, what with long-term drug-abuse problems, really bad health, etc. The old dehydration trick to make the execution team's job more difficult or impossible is well known on death rows throughout the country. Therefore, all too often, we hear of situations where the execution team can't find a vein, or a needle slips out of the vein, or whatever.

    IMO, it would be handy to have a disbarred (or whatever they call it), but medically competent, medico on hand to superintend solutions to such complications.

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    Senior Member Member ted75601's Avatar
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    mostlyclassics - You'll get no argument from me on this point. I was just trying to point out that if a doctor's oath prevents his participation, there are many other options. Obtaining IV access is not "brain surgery" like some people would like you to think. If I can do it, most anyone properly trained could as well. Every time you donate blood or go to a clinic for a blood test, the tech accesses the vein. The only difference is the direction fluids flow -into the patient or out. It is a manual skill that requires practice - the more you do, the better you get. Some hospitals actually have "IV Teams" which consist of nurses that do nothing but start IV's all day. If I needed an IV I'd choose one of these nurses any day. Some of the people that nurses get in the ER or paramedics get in the ambulance are in such bad shape they could be declared dead (some actually are dead) but they get an IV anyway. Again, I agree with you that having a physician there would be the ideal, but the lack of one should not be a reason avoid an execution

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    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    ted75601, I'm on a medication which requires monthly blood tests, and I've been on it for many years. As a consequence, the veins in both elbows are scar tissue, so the vampire has to use a blood vessel in a hand these days. I can always tell who's new by the bruise: phlebotomists with experience don't bruise me; newbies turn the back of my hand purple.

    It is a manual skill that requires practice - the more you do, the better you get. Some hospitals actually have "IV Teams" which consist of nurses that do nothing but start IV's all day. If I needed an IV I'd choose one of these nurses any day.
    Don't you wish states would employ such teams? But they don't. Given all the "whoopsies" in LI executions, I have to believe states are using people who are quite inexperienced.

    Since states don't use experienced phlebotomists, I suggest that having a defrocked doc handy would be a decent second choice.

  7. #7
    Senior Member Member ted75601's Avatar
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    I agree. When you consider the $ a state spends on an execution you would think they could afford someone experienced.

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