I get it now. Qualification: “Letting pressures equalize” does NOT involve pumping air into the suit. It involves letting air out and thereby subjecting the occupant to the full pressures of 100 feet of water. Except it might be more than that: I’m not sure exactly how deep the Mythbusters team submerged their test suit.
Not **once **did I say all drugs are anesthetics.
An apple = a fruit. A fruit = not necessarily an apple.
Not **once **did I say that the drugs currently used for lethal injection are anesthetics.
Please stop misrepresenting.
Actually sodium thiopentol, which was part of one of the traditional “three drug cocktails” was originally a general anesthetic.
I’m not sure I’ve ever fully understood why the death penalty came back. When the process as it existed in the 1970s was struck down as unconstitutional, why did the States bother with developing this lethal injection regime instead of just abandoning the death penalty at that time? I was an adult back then and have lived through all the years since. I do not remember it ever being a big issue of public interest (nothing like the abortion, guns, illegal immigrant etc issues.)
While there is certainly and was certainly a big spike in crime in the late 70s/80s, and a lot of support for politicians that espoused “three strikes” laws and tough penalties for various non-capital crimes, I don’t actually remember a lot of people back then or now who cared a lot about whether or not the death penalty was happening. I think the only people in America who really seem to care about the death penalty are the people who go to the prisons to protest executions. While a majority of Americans are traditionally polled as supporting it, I’ve never met in my entire life (and I move in political circles), anyone who is a die hard pro-death penalty guy. Who donates money to keep it around, who uses it as a litmus test for electing politicians etc.
I understand where things like three strikes came from, but coming up with ways to reinstate the death penalty in the 1970s I don’t see that it got anyone a lot of votes or anything. It just lead to a lot of money being spent and litigation. Now that the drug supply is curtailed and many states, even ones like Ohio and Missouri which have not been big users of the DP, are going to all these crazy ends to keep the process around, I’m just not sure for whose benefit the politicians and officials involved are doing this. I genuinely see no real public interest in it. I wonder if it’s just a bureaucratic momentum thing, these court/legal system officers believe that they have some executive obligation to try to carry out a legal death warrant regardless of practical barriers.
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Anesthesia = procedure.
Anesthetic = drug.
Injection of overdose of anesthetic leads to death."
**
Limousine = car.
Bear = animal.**
Not all cars are limousines.
Not all animals are bears.
Is this logic so hard to understand?
For an American populist politician, the death penalty is an easy way of displaying your toughness. And the US has a populist-friendly political system with weak parties relative to other countries.
Perhaps.
But polls show that support for the death penalty in the US isn’t all that different than other countries. Cite. At the time of that 2000 article, polls showed that 60-70% of Canadians wanted the death penalty reinstated. Even in Britain, 2/3 - 3/4 of the population favored the death penalty. But presumably that didn’t translate into an easy vote swing between 2 candidates. Populism doesn’t fly as well outside of the US. The author concludes, “Basically, then, Europe doesn’t have the death penalty because its political systems are less democratic, or at least more insulated from populist impulses, than the U.S. government.”
All that said, while support for the death penalty in the US remains high, it has declined over the past 20 years. Cite.
Letting the pressure equalize (rapidly) is what happens when you stop pumping air into the suit (and you don’t have a valve that prevents the equalization). You saw the result. And, IIRC, you could get something similar at around 20-30 feet…I went for 100 so that it would be a sure thing.
(I don’t recall the Mythbusters episode that well, but I think they did their test at 300 feet…but it’s still a quick, if gruesome way to die even at shallower depths).
An anaesthetic does not kill you because an anaesthetic is not meant to kill you. You are misusing words. One part of an anaesthetic process- muscle relaxant might result in death. This was used in the previous method of execution but requires other poisons to ensure death is not uncomfortable and embarrassing as the recent abominations.
As I have pointed out, anaesthesia and the delivery of poisons requires a high skill set not acquired by current judicial killers, and they continue to fail to meet reasonable standards of administration of death making poisons.
Giving an “anaesthetic” does not kill you and is not likely to be a practical method of killing someone.
Please use words in their real meaning, not from your private language.
What about giving an overdose of anesthetic?
I would argue that certain moral issues are , or should e, beyond popularism or even democracy.
For instance, supposing a majority of people wanted to introduce slavery for African Americans to solve the problem as they see it. Or supposing separate but equal laws or anti miscegenation was popular, or people might want to reintroduce death by torture for heinous crimes. These are excluded because they have been seen as abominations, and the constitution amended and laws changed (against the will of many of the people, maybe even a majority or plurality).
I do not believe in a Whig view of history, but I do believe that our ethical standards have improved over the centuries regarding individual rights (although they have declined over collective rights such as bombing in Gaza which would have been unthinkable a hundred years ago.) The drift over the past centuries has been towards increasing respect for individual human rights over collective state action. This is reflected in the difference between the eighteenth century (As amended) Constitution of the USA and the more modern European Convention on Human Rights; the earlier document protecting fewer individual rights than the latter. The same with the rule of law- a century ago few countries possessed the rule of law, now most advanced countries (with notable exceptions) possess this.
Sometimes satire has something to add:
Your second clause obviates your first. The rest of your remarks are just the same ‘cult of progress’ inanity that one hears so often.
And there’s a big contradiction in your world view: first you say that political democracy is an element of being ‘civilised’, and now you say that certain issues shouldn’t be decided democratically. Which is it? (For the record, I’m a big democracy skeptic, but then I’m not the one who wrote off China and Iran as not being ‘civilized’.)
Yes, this, exactly.
How can one possibly describe East Germany, or the late Soviet Union, as not civilized? Pjen, the fact that you may not personally like the political order in a country, doesn’t make them any less civilized.
The definition of civilization here really seems to boil down to ‘what Pjen subjectively prefers’.
This is akin to saying that alcohol can not kill you because alcohol is not meant to kill you. It’s utter nonsense.
An aneasthetic most assuredly can kill you. Chloroform is an aneasthetic. Plenty of people have died from it.
Your idea that because something isn’t intended to kill you therefore it doen’t kill you is bizarre. Any number of drugs that are listed as aneasthetics and that have been used as anaeasthetics do kill people.
No, he isn’t. All he said was that anesthetics are drugs. That is an indisputable fact. If you can provide a single reference that states that aneasthetics are not drugs, then you might be able to say that he is misusing words.
At this stage, he is using words as every single medical professional and physiologist in the world uses them
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OK, so anesthetics do kill people. That is in direct contradiction to your statement above that aneasthetics do no kill people.
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Many other parts of the aneasthetic process can also kill you, from the benzodiazepines used as premedication to the drugs that suppress reflexes such as coughing and gagging.
In fact I can’t think of a single drug that is now or has ever been used for anaeasthesia that hasn’t resulted in death. Can you name one?
If not your claim that only “one part of an anaesthetic process… might result in death” seems pretty silly.
So how does this support your contention that it is wrong to call an aneasthetic a drug?
You need to go through some amazing weaseling for that to be true.
By this standard. shooting someone in the head does not kill them.
He is using words in the way that every single doctor and physiologist on the planet uses them. If you can find a single doctor and physiologist who supports your belief that anaeasthetics are not drugs and that anaesthetics do not kill people, then by all means, show us.
Until then, you really shouldn’t criticise people for using words teh way that every single professional in the field uses them.
The Whig view of history is eternal progress in all matters.
Progress and improvement in certain matters (such as medicine, architecture, flyin machines and dare I say Human Rights) is not a Whig view of history but a theory of change.
Incidentally, Pjen you’re aware that your conception of, um, ‘ethics’ is not universally shared? And that a citizen of China, Cuba or Iran would probably be as contemptuous of your ‘morality’ as you are of theirs?
I hope you’ve retired from the nursing profession. A nurse who holds such notions as you just mentioned above would be a very dangerous medical professional.
Sleeping pills aren’t meant to kill people, either. But if someone swallowed 200 of them, he might die.
Ignorance again.
Modern ‘sleeping pills’ which we professionals call hypnotics are safe in massive overdose. When barbiturates were used a generation ago you would have been correct; now you are wrong.
You might well die from swallowing 50 Tylenol though!