Hospitals are allowed to order drugs in order to treat patients. They are not allowed to then loan or sell them on to kill people. The hospital is on record as saying they assumed that the drugs were for pain relief in prison hospitals. The net effect of this will be that pharmacists (keeping to their professional codes of practice) will in future question any request from judicial killers to borrow or purchase drugs that can be used to kill felons.
Prisons can only purchase such killing drugs from manufacturers because pharmacists will not be part of the process of killing- same as nurses and doctors cannot be part of the process itself.
I am unaware of any law or “code of practice” that compels physicians to avoid taking part in executions.*
Interestingly, the following was part of a submission to the N.Y. Times ethicist which appeared in yesterday’s Sunday magazine:
“A physician friend oversees the lethal-injection program in another state. I say this is unethical. He says just the opposite. Before him, he says, executions were often prolonged and painful. Now they are fast and painless. Because the state will continue the program with or without him, he feels that his work is humanitarian in nature.”
*if such a claim refers to the Hippocratic Oath stating that “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan”, then it should be noted that the proscription would also apply to humane end-of-life assistance, and also take into account that nothing is mandatory about the Hippocratic Oath, and many physicians graduate and go out into practice without taking the Hippocratic Oath (myself included).
The only relevant item in that link is about the ABMS anesthesiology board voting to revoke certifications of anesthesiologists who participate in executions.
Since states typically do not release names of physicians assisting in executions, and there has even been legislation passed prohibiting specialty associations and medical boards from sanctioning such doctors, I submit that any regulations like that of the anesthesiology board are toothless and that medical professionals continue to have the right to assist in executions.
It is also hypocritical in the extreme for opponents of capital punishment to try to 1) compel medical professionals to avoid participation in the process, and 2) prevent authorities from having access to effective drugs to carry out executions - while simultaneously protesting that the process is inhumane.
It’s reminiscent of the person who murdered his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was now an orphan.