I don’t agree that there are inherent moral problems with the death penalty. It’s certainly not unjust- it is in fact perfect justice, blood for blood.
I believe the New Testament forbids the death penalty in most instances, possibly with the exception of treason, rebellion, etc… So if I had my way, as a citizen, I’d definitely vote not to execute murderers or other common criminals. But I have no issue if a mostly non-Christian country like Iran, China or India chooses to execute murderers.
::shrugs:: Okay, we’re an uncivilised democratic republic where the individual has rights against the state that can be enforced in fair tribunals in between exercising free speech and voting rights and et cetera. I have shrugged.
Iran, China, Cuba have certainly some of the appurtenances of modern civilisation, but as with the USA they fall down on other expectations from current fully civilised states.
For someone who claims to “have worked as a nurse assisting anaesthetics,” you seem to know surprisingly little about the topic.
Your definition of Justice is un-nuanced. Justice does not mean revenge, it means acting justly- often with mercy as much as with vengeance.
Plato’s take on Justice from the SEP:
“the just individual is someone whose soul is guided by a vision of the Good, someone in whom reason governs passion and ambition through such a vision. When, but only when, this is the case, is the soul harmonious, strong, beautiful, and healthy, and individual justice precisely consists in such a state of the soul. Actions are then just if they sustain or are consonant with such harmony.”
Nothing to do with extracting revenge.
John Rawls on Justice from SEP:
“justice as an individual virtue is derivative from justice as a social virtue defined via certain principles of justice. The principles, famously, are derived from an “original position” in which (very roughly) rational contractors under a “veil of ignorance” decide how they wish to commit themselves to being governed in their actual lives. Rawls deliberately invokes Kantian rationalism (or anti-sentimentalism) in explaining the intellectual or theoretical motivation behind his construction, and the two principles of justice that he argues would be agreed upon under the contractual conditions he specifies represent a kind of egalitarian political liberalism. Roughly, those principles stress (equality of) basic liberties and opportunities for self-advancement over considerations of social welfare, and the distribution of goods in society (according to the the so-called difference principle) is then supposed to work to the advantage of all (especially the worst-off members of society). Rawls argues that a utilitarian principle of justice dictating simply the maximization of overall social well-being would not be accepted in his original position and is accordingly less plausible than the conception of justice embodied in his own two principles and the construction that leads to them.”
Again note that vengeance is missing from the definition.
Sorry, Pjen, please disregard the “you know little about the topic” comment. It was unnecessarily snippy.
OK. Define Anaesthesia. No. let me do it as you are possibly incapable of accepting facts contrary to your false beliefs.
You seem to think that it means stopping people breathing or otherwise ceasing life functions. That is not anaesthesia.
Anaesthsia is a multi layered process involving reduction of level of consciousness, avoiding the problems of experiencing pain, ensuring that there is no (or little) memory of the process being carried out, relaxation of the body and ensuring that quiescence is obtained during certain parts of the procedure. That together with maintaining acceptable levels of oxygenation, and other measures of bodily function.
What you are talking about is not anaesthesia, but the introduction of chemical elements that destroy parts of the body necessary for the continuation of life- poisoning.
It is derived from the Greek for “Removal of Feeling”. Anaesthesia may be obtained with or without full loss of consciousness and is not necessarily destructive of life.
Inducing anaesthesia is a skilled process beyond untrained people. Let’s face it they cannot even effectively kill someone with the simple poisons that they are using now. God knows what a mess they would make of modern anaesthesia.
Now go away and learn the real meanings of words before you misuse them.
See my necessarily snippy reply.
Anesthesia = procedure.
*Anesthetic *= drug.
Injection of overdose of *anesthetic *leads to death.
Not once have I said that we are practicing surgical-type *anesthesia *on condemned criminals; to the contrary, my whole argument claims the opposite.
Not once have I said that. Read my post again.
The sad thing is that it would be possible to execute someone using untrained or barely trained staff with no chance of failure, pain or lengthy process of death.
The problem is that it does not allow the family of the victims to look the person in the eye as they die from a conscious state.
Mental health nurses regularly sedate patients using intra muscular injection with minimum distress. It is easy to teach restraint techniques to the ill educated- it is done with prison officers all the time. Four point restraint followed by an injection of a fast acting combination of a major tranquilliser together with a benzodiazepine has never failed to ensure stupor within a matter of minutes. With the person unconscious, yet still breathing and not able to struggle, a simple small catheter could then be inserted into easily available small veins and stupor maintained via further use of a short acting benzodiazapine. Then pentobarbital or sodium thiopental administered with a long needle through the ribs into the heart or body cavity would result in almost immediate painless death. This is how animals are “put to sleep”. We are not unnecessarily cruel to animals.
The problem is that it looks too easy a death and the person is not awake to experience the procedure. The problem is that we want to be unnecessarily cruel to prisoners.
At Velocity. This is your original post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pjen View Post
Anaesthesia is a complex subject requiring considerable skill from both anaesthetists and others
No, anesthesia in surgery is complicated and requires great skill because the patient is to be kept alive. That’s why it requires great precision.
An execution, where the object is to kill the person, is far simpler. Just inject an overdose of anesthetic into the veins. The need for the delicate balance and complex calculations necessary to ensure patient survival in the operating room doesn’t exist in this situation."
You refer to an anaesthetic. You do not know what an anaesthetic is by your misuse of the term. See my description of anaesthesia above.
The word you are looking for is poison- introducing poison into the veins. Thuis is where the incompetents are going wrong with the recent abominations. Your method is no different.
Except, YOU were the one who brought up the history of the U.S. in the first place. Britain certainly has just as much blood on its hands. And don’t tell me you “learned and changed quickly”, because it’s bullshit. Just because we still have the death penalty (which I certainly don’t like either) doesn’t make you guys a bastion of morality.
So quit with the “we’re soooo much more advanced than you savages” schtick.
This doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t see an intrinsic link between freedoms/rights and civilization. It’s easy for me to posit a totalitarian, but highly civilized, country. I think Nazi Germany fits, as does modern Iran, as does China (though not really totalitarian, just authoritarian.) The Soviet Union fit when it existed, East Germany during the Cold War etc.
Now I have a curious medical question: I was administered general anesthesia once. I simply fell asleep after about thirty seconds. If I had been injected with, say, 100 times that amount, wouldn’t I fall asleep painlessly the same way, except that I’d die and not wake up?
NO.
An anaesthetic is a member of the catagory “Drugs”. Not all drugs are anaesthetics- most are not.
Anaesthetics remove memory, consciousness or experience of pain or memory of experience of pain by various effects- anaesthsia requires a mixture of chemicals. The goal of anaesthesia is the maintenance of life while certain bodily functions are suspended.
The drugs being used currently and having been used previously are not and never have been anaesthetics. They are among other things, muscle relaxants (to make it look like a person is not in agony, even if they are and which may lead to death by anoxia- feeling starved of air because the rib cage cannot move), sedatives to cause gradual loss of consciousness and a poison to stop the heart from beating. That is not anaesthesia.
Try using words correctly!
No. Many drugs reach what is called ‘blockade’- no more receptors to be influenced and have what is called a high theraputic ratio. For instance it is impossible to die from the most commonly used class of drugs used for initial anaesthesia- the benzodiazepines- Before we knew about blockade they were used in massive anounts, the same going for Thorazine and such.
What you experienced was induction, not anaesthesia. After gentle loss of consciousness the anaesthetist would have added medication to reduce reaction to pain and discomfort existent even when sedate, muscle relaxant to stop involuntary movements, and disturbingly, a drug similar to angel dust which acts as a short term memory destroyer- so even if you were aware of pain or such, you would not remember it clearly.
Introducing this via a saline drip is skilled work and many nurses and doctors who do it every day will have spectacular failures to pass the required catheter. Older people have calcified veins, users of IV drugs have dreadful veins, some people (especially the obese) have veins too deep to see or feel (most people feel for veins rather than look for them- with difficult patients I actually close my eyes if I have trouble locating a good vein- it makes you more aware of you fingertips!)
Your whole idea of anaesthesia is incorrect. As I said, try to educate yourself.
If you do not feel that respect for individual rights and acceptance of the Golden Rule are high points of modern civilisation, then you are well out of kilter with modern conceptions of the quality of being civilised.
Civilisation is not artistic culture alone, it involves ethics as well as aesthetics.
I think you will find that I was not the first to bring up US history separate from judicial killing.
I’m thinking more technological/industrial, things like that. I don’t see any relationship between being civilized and being ethical. I disagree that there is a generally accepted modern “conception” of “civilized.”