I had a colonoscopy and endoscopy done last week…procedures that are now performed under anesthesia.
The anesthesiologist was a very personable guy who went over a long check-list of questions with me before wheeling me into the room where the intrusive tubes were waiting. I had an IV in when I entered the room…and the doctor who was going to perform the procedures was already there.
“Turn on your side” were the first words I heard; “Okay, I’m gonna put to sleep” followed almost immediately.
If I had been asked to count backward from ten…I doubt I would have gotten the entire word “nine” out. I was “under” almost immediately.
They coulda cut my nuts off with a chainsaw and I would not have felt a thing.
I woke up in the recovery room 20 minutes later.
Now I ask: How is it that one of the problems still arising in executions using lethal injections…is the possibility of the guest of honor feeling pain?
How?
I realize there are differences of opinions about capital punishment…but that aside, how can there still be problems with the possibility of pain being felt considering the kinds of drugs available to put people unconscious?
I am fairly convinced that most of the proponents of capital punishments do not WANT executions to be painless. There are proposed methods of executions that are much “better” than the ones being used now in the US if you believe that minimizing pain and anxiety is better.
That sort of anesthesia requires a professional–an anesthesiologist, or at least a nurse anesthetist. You can’t count on a non-professional to put somebody reliably under every time.
Every professional medical society expressly prohibits its members from taking part in an execution. That’s why the methods used have to be simple enough for non-medically-trained personnel to do it. And 99% of the time I’m sure they manage to do it without incident.
The other 1% are the problem, and are what you need professionals to avoid. But professionals can’t do it.
Generally, there is no pain. But the process itself is not flawless, and occasionally it’s not carried out according to the process. Death is caused using a three drug cocktail: Sodium Thiopental (knocks you out), Pancuronium (stops your lungs), Potassium Chloride (stops your heart). They are given in that order. You should be knocked out before the other two drugs are given (like what happened at your procedure). But,
People are different. People don’t react consistently to the same doses of drugs. For instance, there are cases where thiopental is given yet the prisoner remains conscious, but unable to let anyone know. Pancuronium is then given and stops their lungs. They are aware of this, and they consciously suffocate to death. The problem is the process, not enough knock out drug is given.
There’s a lack of medical training. “Trained” workers give the drugs, not doctors. There was a case in Texas where they could not find a vein. They ended up finding one in his scrotum. The problem is the process is not followed correctly.
These are two examples, there are more. Generally it goes as your procedure went, every once in awhile it doesn’t. There are ways in which it could be improved to lessen the chances of a risk of suffering (massive dose of the knockout barbiturate, literally enough to kill on its own; better training, use high tech equipment to scan the brain and make sure the person is unconscious before administering the second or third drugs).
Besides the lack of medical professionals, executions are generally set up to make it so that no one person alone killed the person. It’s a matter of allaying guilt and showing that it’s not just one person, but the system that’s killing the convict. There’s also the desire to keep things looking sanitary. They’d rather the person just “turn off” than, for instance, being splattered instantaneously by an 8 ton weight.
Occasional accidents I assume-but since everyone executed in the US for the last half-century have mostly been due to murder I’d say there’s nothing wrong if they feel some bit of pain-that would be justice.
If you’re taking that position, are you also in favor of other non-fatal corporal punishments? Do you, for example, consider whipping or caning to be appropriate punishments for certain crimes?
Hell, even if you think that some kind of pain is only appropriate for executions, why not guarantee some (or a lot of) pain, instead of making the method unreliable?
Although I don’t really support the death penalty, I think the claims that lethal injection is cruel and causes unnecessary suffering are likely bogus. That said, there is the phenomomen of anesthesia awareness–general anesthesia doesn’t always go as smoothly as the OP experienced. And anesthesia awareness occurs with trained anesthesiologists; as has been pointed out, executions are not carried out by doctors. Against that point, anesthesiologists are trying to strike the difficult balance between keeping their patients insensate while still keeping them breathing; executioners are free to dump mega-overdoses of anesthetic into the condemned, which is exactly what they do.
At any rate, even if a prisoner experiences “anesthesia awareness” during an execution, rather than suffering through a gruesome surgical procedure that may last for hours, at most all he’ll likely experience is the pain and suffering of waiting for a few moments or even seconds for the shutdown of his heart and lungs to produce unconsciousness and then brain death. Realistically, a heck of a lot of us who aren’t murderers will suffer that much–dying of a massive coronary–and many of us won’t even be that lucky (dying slowly of cancer instead).
The fact that there’s so much hand-wringing about this and other aspects of the death penalty indicates to me that we as a society are too fundamentally conflicted about capital punishment, and have too many requirements for execution procedures–it’s got to cause no pain and suffering and it has to look neat and it needs to be something that can be administered impersonally and preferably by two different people flipping redundant switches, and so on and so forth. As a result, capital punishment is freakishly rare–even Texas only executes a couple dozen people a year, while hundreds of murders are committed every year in Texas. This makes it very unlikely the death penalty will function as a real deterrant against crime; and although it might be the case that those executed are truly those who have committed uniquely heinous crimes–in some cases I’m sure that’s true–it’s more likely to be a crapshoot in which heinous criminals with bad luck or few resources get the death penalty while equally heinous criminals with better luck or greater resources don’t–which is hardly justice. The near random nature of executions in the U.S. is, to me, a much better argument for abolition of capital punishment than any alleged (and really only speculative, and probably brief even if true) pain and suffering experienced by people being executed by lethal injection.
A few years ago I had a procedure where I was put under so a doctor could put a scope down my throat and look around my stomach. I woke up in the middle of the procedure, sat bolt upright in a total panic and started yanking on the scope. He had to give me some more versed to put me back down.
The US seems to have (or had) a somewhat Heath Robinson attitude towards the mechanics of carrying out the death penalty - lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair - all with issues surrounding the humanity of the method used. If you are going to have a death penalty, and I’m certainly no fan, why not do what Russia used to do: shoot the back of the neck from very close range. Painless and cheap, if a bit messy.
I posted in the other thread about this, and I still don’t see the issue. A medical professional is required to administer anesthesia during surgery because there is a danger that if you give too much, you could kill a person. There is no such danger with an execution. Just give the prisoner 50 times what you would normally give a person for surgery. Can’t find a vein for a needle, then put on a mask. That’s what I had for surgery. Pretty much guarantees no screw ups.
Hell, only 15 years ago lethal injection was what anti-death penalty people were pointing to as a humane method when going to court to argue against the electric chair, hanging, or the gas chamber.
But that violates the “no one person does it” rule mentioned above. Silly, but then the entire rigmarole is silly; as said, you can just shoot them in the head if you insist on executing people.
Awwww, poor babies want death penalties, but don’t have any stomach for the actual mechanics and realities of it (the blood). I would HOPE that being humane would trump a weak tummy on the part of the people who support execution.
I think the only reason to be humane is to prevent giving the anti-death penalty crowd, uh, ‘ammunition’ to try and prevent it. I’m generally against the death penalty, but some people just need a good killing. People who cut in line, Jeffrey Dahlmer types, etc. I prefer the woodchipper method. Head first for Dahlmer, feet first for line cutters.
