I’m all for abolishing the death penalty. But I have grave doubts that would actually solve the underlying problem (of people who murder white people receiving disproportionately harsher sentences than people who murder black people). Abolishing the death penalty just means that people who are convicted of murdering a white person on average are sentenced to, let’s say, at least 70 years of imprisonment, or life without parole (and serve on average at least 25 years), while people convicted of murdering a black person on average are sentenced to only 20 years of imprisonment (and serve seven years).
I am Carnivorousplant, and I agree with this post.
I completely agree. I was merely suggesting a solution to the humane execution query.
I support everything you said here!
As I said above, we have the technology to kill mammals quickly, reliably, and humanely. Vets routinely “put pets to sleep”. Livestock and horses are often killed with a bolt blasted into the hindbrain. Slitting the throat (as with kosher slaughter) kills very quickly. Fur animals are killed with nitrogen asphyxiation so as not to damage the pelt. (And as I mentioned above, i know two humans who passed out from asphyxiation but recovered, and both reported it was painless, even pleasant.) Heck, there are even protocols for physician assisted suicide that work reliably, and the relatives report that the deceased did not appear to suffer. But even if you assume that you can’t get access to drugs and physicians to prescribe them, there are plenty of options.
The issues with messy, painful, inhumane, and unreliable execution of criminals are 100% political.
It does seem odd, not only using nitrogen, but being able to euthanize dogs in a matter of seconds with drugs.
You’re asking if the methods devised by medical professionals to reliably end some people’s lives could be used to reliably end other people’s lives?
Most dogs weren’t habitual drug users who have destroyed their veins. And most veterinarians aren’t untrained in the art of finding a vein, since vets are allowed to put animals to sleep, whereas medical professionals are not really allowed to kill someone who hasn’t consented to it.
On the nitrogen front, I really never thought about what goes into a death penalty “protocol”, other than it’s pretty formal and strictly followed, right? Even lethal injections have to use some machine that specifically designed to deliver some three-drug protocol in some certain way:
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It’s not just hooking up an IV and injecting the drugs.
That appears to be his question.
Assisted suicide is morally different than killing someone who does not want to die. We are back to the medical oath, “First, do no harm”.
A bit like asking if a hammer that works on nails can also be used on other (identical) nails. As for what is used in these cases, it varies. Dignitas (Swiss organization) reportedly uses nembutal. A medically-assisted death at which I was present used Seconal.
The OP’s query was about what could be used to avoid the physical suffering that is suspected in some of lethal-injection death penalty cases. The morality of capital punishment (without consideration of the method employed) is a separate issue.
Admittedly I did detect a bit of sarcasm in his post but the comment does make sense though.
It is not at all a separate issue. When the patient consents to treatment, one can have a doctor or other trained medical professional administer the treatment. When treatment is in the patient’s best interest but the patient is considered incompetent to consent, one can still have a doctor or other trained medical professional administer treatment. When the treatment is being administered against the wishes and interests of the patient and is in fact explicitly meant to harm the patient, then one cannot have trained medical professionals involved, as that would be a major violation of their professional ethics and would result in them no longer being licensed.
This the core issue with administering a ‘humane’ lethal injection - without a medical professional to ensure that the drugs are administered correctly (finding veins can be difficult, for example), to determine the correct dosage for things like the size and condition of the person, to examine the person to ensure that the drugs have taken proper effect, it is not actually possible to be sure that the person was properly rendered insensate before the fatal drugs take effect.
Simply saying ‘use the same drugs that doctors and vets practicing euthanasia do’ ignores the fact that those are administered by a trained medical professional who monitors the procedure to ensure that suffering is minimized, and that said medical professionals cannot participate in a lethal injection procedure. It’s not at all analogous to a hammer because a hammer doesn’t require specialized expertise to use; it’s more like asking if you can have a prison guard construct a safe air frame with some aluminium and machining gear when it normally requires specialists with a lot of knowledge to make one airworthy.
Once again, administering a lethal injection correctly requires certain advanced medical skills. Yes, a doctor qualified and experienced to administer painless voluntary euthanasia could carry out the same procedure on a condemned prisoner. But to do so would violate their code of ethics, and they would lose their licence.
Anybody without the proper qualifications and experience could try to follow the same procedure, but is likely to botch it, and make the execution painful.
Do vets have ethical constraints?
Could judicial employees be trained in medicine to perform lethal injection without ethical restraint?
I must digress again and agree with those above: ending the death penalty would take care of the problem.
Of course vets have rigorous ethical restraints. Look that up for yourself.
Would you be willing to do 4 years (nursing), or 6-8 years (pharmacy) or 11 years (medicine) of incredibly rigorous training so you could be hired to do a few hours of work a year performing executions? Once you performed an execution you then wouldn’t be welcome practicing prolonging or improving quality of life. Leaving you to secure your livelihood as a circuit riding traveling executioner.
You need that much to know how to give injections and deal with any complications? I speak of prisons having an executioner trained with enough medicine to perform the task, not someone who seeks a medical career.
The people who work in slaughterhouses kill sheep and pigs and cattle, and they don’t have 4+ years of training to do it. There are slaughterhouses that take an interest in humane slaughter. They probably do more training than the other ones, but I’m sure it’s less than 4 years.
The people who kill fur animals don’t have medical degrees and medical oaths, either. Some of the methods used to kill fur animals methods used to kill fur animals would be hard with human executions (breaking the neck) but others (nitrogen or CO asphyxiation) would be feasible.
Anesthesiology is a specialized area of medicine requiring extensive training. You can’t just study it on its own. You need to be a qualified doctor before you can even begin your training. Properly qualified anesthetists are among the highest paid in the medical profession.
I would imagine that administering euthanasia requires the same degree of skill. Remember to do it properly, you first have to put the patient into a gentle sleep, then administer the drugs to end life.
Killing someone is easy. Killing them painlessly is hard.
And killing people painlessly with countless people watching, figuratively as well as literally, is even harder.