The arithmetic gets a little difficult to follow. The way it reads, only two forbid the presence of a physician; and thirty-five either permit it or require it, and of the eighteen that only permit it (without requiring it), they also permit participation. And the other seventeen require the physician’s presence but forbid participation.
Seems a little too pat.
I disagree. Lawyers and doctors both take oaths. Lawyers are supposed to do whatever they can, within the scope of the law, to advance their client’s legal interests. Doctors are supposed to do whatever they can, within the scope of accepted medical practice, to protect their client’s health.
Suppose there’s a person who’s been convicted of multiple murders and other horrendous crimes and is sentenced to death. His lawyer is appealing the death sentence and trying to get it overturned. Meanwhile the prisoner has a lief threatening medical emergency and is taken to a hospital. The doctor there is doing all he can to correct the medical problem.
So you have a murderer. And you have both a doctor and a lawyer doing their duty in trying to keep him alive. I don’t feel either one is acting more morally than the other.
The reason a doctor is not allowed to participate for ethical reasons in an execution (i. e., putting the prisoner to death, not performing the posthumous exam for a death certificate) is one of the requirements called out in the Hippocratic Oath.
I’m surprised no one has brought this up before. When lethal injection first came up as an alternate form of execution a couple of decades ago, I remember some MDs stating quite clearly that, while they strongly believed in the death penalty, they could not directly participate in the execution as it was a violation of the oath. In addition, they also saw problems respect to the state laws and ethical requirements at the time (which per kaylasdad99 reference shows actions taken to ameliorate those concerns).
AFAIK, no MD in the US has ever performed an execution. These executions have been performed by technicians whom I WAG are not bound by the same standard.
NSFW:
You could always go like Arthur Jarrett.
That’s the classical version of the oath that had healers swearing to Apollo. The line you quoted says, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.” This ancient oath also forbid healers from performing surgery, required them to remain celibate, and to share their house with the person who taught them medicine.
Obviously some parts of this oath have been changed over the centuries.
Here’s a modern version of a physician’s oath:
There’s nothing in this that explicitly forbids a physician from participating in an execution.
Thank you. I stand corrected. But honestly, I do remember doctors bring up the Hippocratic Oath (or whatever current version was being invoked at the time) as reason why they could not participate in an execution. (admittedly, there might have been pro-death penalty doctors who believed that the oath did not apply in this situation; but don’t recall anyone making an implicit or explicit argument at the time. Newspapers were the prime news source at the time. Also, I was in California at the time, so that probably biased my understanding…).
The following is a link to “the Fifteen Most Bizarre Movie Deaths” I’d gone looking for the one listed as #2, or, “The Mare of Steel”
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/15-bizarre-movie-deaths/page:3
Some interesting suggestions.
No kidding, you might end up with an evil hand.
It could be a money maker. You could strap the guy up to a post and charge people ten bucks to swat him with a hammer. I am sure lots of death penalty fans would pay .
There was a lawyer around here, Joe “The Hammer” Shapiro, who’s TV commercials were so annoying that it tempted many of us to apply that very penalty to Joe.