# Execution by lethal injection
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 19, 2017, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794 "2017-04-19T15:46:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2017, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/61 "2017-04-21T12:40:31Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> I should like to be sentenced to die of Old Age.
That’s cruel and unusual punishment.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2017, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/62 "2017-04-22T10:27:27Z")
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> An anesthesiologist would be relieving the anguish of someone about to be executed yet at the same time participating in a procedure they and there colleagues would consider wrong in the first place.
This isn’t quite the reason for the AMA stance on capital punishment.
First, the AMA recognizes that each doctor, as a member of society, has the right to decide for themselves whether or not the death penalty is appropriate. The AMA does not dictate that all members must believe that the death penalty is wrong as a condition of practising medicine.
Rather, in using medial skills, they are bound by certain ethical constraints. Two of the most important are that the patient has to consent to treatment, either expressly or impliedly (in the case of someone who’s been hit by a bus and is unconscious, for example), and that the medical abilities are to be used to advance the individual’s health.
Neither of those ethical requirements are met in the case of an anesthesiologist assisting in an execution. The individual is not a patient who is consenting, and the medical skills are not being used to protect the individual’s health.
As one commentator put it, a doctor could participate in an execution by firing squad, by shouldering a rifle and being part of the firing squad. That’s consistent with the AMA’s ethical position on this issue. It’s the use of the medical skills to kill someone that is contrary to medical ethics.
Here’s a link to an article on the issue: [AMA Journal of Ethics: Should Physicians Participate in State-Ordered Executions?](http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2013/03/pfor3-1303.html)
And the AMA ethical guideline: [AMA (Professionalism) E-2.06 Capital punishment](https://www.law.berkeley.edu/clinics/dpclinic/LethalInjection/LI/QA/docs/AMA)
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### Author:  [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2017, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/63 "2017-04-23T20:35:47Z")
And doctors do participate in the _end_ of executions, it’s usually a medical examiner that certifies death, and in many jurisdictions medical examiners are required to be licensed doctor’s (but not all, weird quirk of our form of Federal/Local government that it can vary a good bit.)
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### Author:  [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2017, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/64 "2017-04-23T20:38:49Z")
[This](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp068042) article gives a good case history of the level to which physicians have participated in executions, and notes that some doctor’s participation has reached a level that it resulted in licensure challenges, but no doctor has ever lost their license for participating in an execution since the AMA’s guidelines against participating in lethal injection some 35 years ago.
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2017, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/65 "2017-04-24T14:14:27Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Recently Alabama (or some other state) tried to legalize execution by nitrogen asphyxiation.
>
> It was opposed by a lawmaker on the grounds that “It’s never been done before.”
>
> Well, sure, of course - everything by definition has never been done before, prior to being done for the first time. There was a time when lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, firing squad, etc. had all “never been done before.” Catch-22 logic.
No, that’s a Catch-22 constitutional provision. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. A novel execution method is, by definition, unusual.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/execution-by-lethal-injection/784794/66 "2017-04-24T15:09:03Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#):
>
> No, that’s a Catch-22 constitutional provision. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. A novel execution method is, by definition, unusual.
Not really a problem-the punishment has to be cruel _and_ unusual, not cruel _and/or_ unusual, I believe.
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