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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