Thursday, December 14, 2006
Lethal Doses
Today in Florida, convicted killer Angel Nieves Diaz, 55, was executed via lethal injection. But one injection did not seem to do the trick so Diaz was given a second cocktail of lethal drugs and he did not die until 34 minutes later. You can read the details on CNN , including how he moved for 24 minutes after the first injection (which is supposed to paralyze) and how his mouth opened and closed.
Cruel and unusual?
I am against the death penalty for a host of reasons, but I can understand how and why some people are in favor it. Yet I cannot fathom how lethal injection remains legal in this country.
For starters, the only way to be sure that the lethal injection is done properly is to have a doctor on hand. But doctors take oaths about not doing harm and all, making it ethically impossible for a licensed, trained physician to oversee such a process.
Second, the cocktail of drugs first paralyzes the victim before stopping his/her heart. For details on the injection, I refer you to ‘how stuff works’ (yeah, that’s a bit sick, but their description isn’t bad).
First the prisoner is anesthetized, then paralyzed and then a toxic chemical is administered to stop their heart.
But what if something goes wrong? In theory, they might be in great pain and not be able to say so. The Lancet came out with an important study in 2003 about this. Using post-mortem blood samples they claimed that 43% of prisoners had levels that indicated they may have been ‘aware’ at the time of death. These results were challenged, as post-mortem samples may not reflect levels of anesthesia in the blood at the time of death.
But I don’t care.
It seems clear that there is the risk of awareness from this form of execution. I don’t believe that is worth taking a chance.
Cruel and unusual?
I am against the death penalty for a host of reasons, but I can understand how and why some people are in favor it. Yet I cannot fathom how lethal injection remains legal in this country.
For starters, the only way to be sure that the lethal injection is done properly is to have a doctor on hand. But doctors take oaths about not doing harm and all, making it ethically impossible for a licensed, trained physician to oversee such a process.
Second, the cocktail of drugs first paralyzes the victim before stopping his/her heart. For details on the injection, I refer you to ‘how stuff works’ (yeah, that’s a bit sick, but their description isn’t bad).
First the prisoner is anesthetized, then paralyzed and then a toxic chemical is administered to stop their heart.
But what if something goes wrong? In theory, they might be in great pain and not be able to say so. The Lancet came out with an important study in 2003 about this. Using post-mortem blood samples they claimed that 43% of prisoners had levels that indicated they may have been ‘aware’ at the time of death. These results were challenged, as post-mortem samples may not reflect levels of anesthesia in the blood at the time of death.
But I don’t care.
It seems clear that there is the risk of awareness from this form of execution. I don’t believe that is worth taking a chance.
# posted by Sarah : 1:07 PM
