As am I. I’m in favour of the death penalty in theory, it’s just that the US is so very shit at it.
Actually, ballocks, (although typically spelled bollix), was in use in the U.S. at least as early as WWII, (having come home with the vets either during that world war or the earlier one). I am not sure that its original meaning made it home; it was a favorite expression of my mother (born 1916) who was not noted for her indulgence in obscenity or crude language. It somewhat passed out of usage in the U.S. through the sixties, but it never seriously disappeared. It may have missed a generation as the Boomers did not realize the etymology of “bollix” and so did not seize upon it when they brought the rest of the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television into the mainstream.
“Sociopathic right wingers” did nothing to promote a serious discussion.
Demanding to know whether one was so defined was making something dumb unnecessarily personal.
Agreeing that the personal shot could be aimed at another poster trod too closely to the line against insults.
Knock it off:
Avoid ill-considered expressions that will inflame rather than inform.
Do not make this discussion personal.
[ /Moderating ]
Thanks for that. I was going on the ease with which I could use abusive words in High school without people knowing how naughty “A load of bollocks” or “what a wanker” were. Such language also spread to my friend group who still occasionally use the words!
And thinking more deeply about it, I would not be surprised if the two above high concepts were also prevalent in the recently immigrating Irish community in the twentieth century!
And now we get the coverage of the full horror of the recent botched judicial killing:
During the nearly two hours it took for an Arizona death row inmate to die last week, executioners injected him with 15 times the amount of a sedative and a painkiller that they originally intended to use, according to documents released Friday.
Records released to Joseph Rudolph Wood’s attorneys show he was administered midazolam and hydromorphone in 50-milligram increments 15 times between 1:53 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., for a total of 750 milligrams of each drug. He was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m. after gasping more than 600 times while he lay on the table.
Arizona’s execution protocol calls for 50 milligrams of each drug, although some states use as much as 500 milligrams of midazolam in their execution procedures.
‘Those are pretty staggering amounts of medication. They did not shortchange in the dose,’ said Karen Sibert, a longtime anesthesiologist and spokeswoman for the California Society of Anesthesiologists.
Sibert, an associate professor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said patients who are sedated before a surgery typically receive no more than 2 milligrams each of midazolam and hydromorphone.
‘It would be rare that I would use more than 2 milligrams even for a lengthy surgery,’ Sibert said. ‘If that is accurate, that is absolutely a lethal dose.’
Wood’s attorney, Dale Baich, said the dosage details show why an independent investigation of Wood’s execution by a nongovernmental authority is necessary.
‘The Arizona execution protocol explicitly states that a prisoner will be executed using 50 milligrams of hydromorphone and 50 milligrams of midazolam,’ he said in a written statement.
‘The execution logs released today by the Arizona Department of Corrections shows that the experimental drug protocol did not work as promised. Instead of the one dose as required under the protocol, ADC injected 15 separate doses of the drug combination, resulting in the most prolonged execution in recent memory.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2713816/Records-Arizona-inmate-injected-15-times.html#ixzz39FToqLv7
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I’m not grasping the “horror” here. Wouldn’t injecting him with 15 times the intended dose just kill him more quickly? Would you prefer it had taken him longer to die, so that you could then revel in how mucn more graphic and unseemly his death was?
Previously I was going on memory but having actually checked now I find that the State was grossly negligent. Neither drug, together or alone was likely to kill quickly.
The Midazolam would have been little more effective at 50mg let alone 750mg; there are only so many receptors to block. And anyway increasing the midazolam was unlikely to kill him anyway as its LD50 is 20-25 mg/kg in rats- say he was 100kg (220lb) only half of people would be likely to die from 2500mg!
I am not sure how much blockade there is with hydromorphone, but its LD50 in mice is 85mg/kilo- 8500mg for a 100kg man.
They used 750 mg of each.
Incompetents!
The point is that neither medication was actually a true poison. It was predictable from what i have just read about overdose for these two drugs that the process of death would be long drawn out.
Increasing the dose does not necessarily increase either the effectivenesss or toxicity of a drug. Most drugs of this type rely on receptor sites on certain nerve cells. There are only so many of these and once they have been blockaded, increase of dose has no more effect as there are no more sites for the additional chemicals to attach to.
Previous judicial killings have involved the adminidtartion of a cardiotoxic drug such a Pottasium salts which cause a heart attack and sudden death.
Previous schedules called for a sedative (like Midazolam) to hypnotise and sedate the victim, a muscle relaxant such as suxamethonium to stop people seeing any death throes and to reduce breathing, and finally a cardiotoxin to cause a heart attack. This was fairly effective.
Now they are just playing amateur hour with non-toxic drugs.
Then I assume you are very angry with your fellow anti-CP activists who have made it impossible for the state to acquire the drugs that you acknowledge are known to work quickly and humanely.
And yet, he is dead, so either there is a flaw in your math or in your chemistry.
No. LD50 is the point at which 50% of a sample of animals die when administered a certain dose. A few will die at low concentrations, more at middling concentrations and more at higher concentrations.
One would not choose these drugs rationally if one intended to kill quickly.
As noted above, Tylenol is more toxic (although it would take 3 days or more).
They are basically using low toxicity drugs here. As I said, amateur hour.
So your objection is that the people carrying out executions are not being sufficiently professional about it for your tastes, then.
Have been doing some research on overdose in these drugs. Should a subsequent execution result in a cancellation of the killing process becasue of length (as this one nearly did) the victim would quite likely be severely brain damaged from persistent low level anoxia, and therefore could not be put through the process again. The state would have to support a brain damaged individual for life.
You can twist it that way if you wish.
What I am saying is that the procedures being used are unlikely to result in the quick death required to avoid it being seen as cruel and unusual punishment.
Some good news:
“Eric Holder, the US attorney general, told PBS on Thursday he was troubled by the widespread lack of transparency and the recent prolonged deaths. A wide-ranging federal review of executions is ongoing.”
Support for my take above:
David Waisel, an associate professor of anaesthesia in Boston, said that simply increasing dosages, as Ohio has decided to do, is no guarantee that the drugs will be more effective at killing death-row prisoners. “Twice the dosage is not necessarily twice the effect,” he said, adding that it was impossible to “know for sure” whether an inmate on the gurney is in pain or not.
Would firing squads be OK? They’re 100% effective and very quick.
Now Louisiana judicial killers con hospital into providing drugs against their will.
Well, I applaud a government official’s initiative in finding a workaround, albeit toward an inefficient goal.
From that link, “con” seems to overstate it a touch: they purchased the vials but did not inform the hospital of its intended use for the drug … ‘We assumed the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it.’" Like buying a newspaper without mentioning that you just want to wrap fish in it, or use it as a prop in a play, or whatever.