Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 27, 2006 3:47:51 GMT -5
The News & Record, opinion
North Carolina can avoid a death-penalty standoff over medical ethics if physicians aren't asked to participate in executions. Or, better, if it abolishes capital punishment.
North Carolina uses lethal injection, and state law requires a "surgeon or physician" to attend. But American Medical Association policy prohibits physicians from taking part in executions -- a position the N.C. Medical Board tentatively adopted Friday.
The board recognizes the difference between attending and participating in an execution. The courts may not.
In April, U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard -- responding to a
contention by condemned North Carolina inmate Willie Brown Jr. that lethal injection potentially causes a painful death -- allowed the execution to proceed only if the state provided "personnel with sufficient medical training" to make sure Brown would be unconscious before and during the administration of the fatal drugs. "Should plaintiff exhibit effects of consciousness at any time during the execution, such personnel shall immediately provide appropriate medical care so as to insure plaintiff is
immediately returned to an unconscious state."
Brown was executed April 21, but the issues raised by his case have new life. Since then, a federal court in Missouri issued an order to that state that "a board certified anesthesiologist shall be responsible for the mixing of all drugs which are used in the lethal injection process."
North Carolina says an anesthesiologist isn't needed, that registered nurses, paramedics and emergency medical technicians are qualified to meet Judge Howard's directive.
Dr. Orin F. Guidry, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, does not support that assertion.
"If the courts demand that inmates be sufficiently anesthetized, then I would have to agree with the (Missouri) court that the only way to assure that would be to have an anesthesiologist prepare and administer the drugs, carefully observe the inmate and all pertinent monitors, and finally to integrate all this information," he wrote in a June 30 message to ASA members.
The next court ruling in North Carolina could very well echo the Missouri decision, leaving a death-row impasse: Judges say executions by lethal injection can't go forward without physicians; physicians refuse for reasons of medical ethics. Guidry advised anesthesiologists to "steer clear" of executions, adding: "The legal system has painted itself into this corner,
and it is not our obligation to get it out."
There are two ways North Carolina can stay out of a corner. One is to devise a new way of putting condemned inmates to death -- one that doesn't call for the services of a physician. The other is to eliminate the death penalty.
The second option is infinitely more practical. Capital punishment, applied inconsistently and prone to fatal error, poses too many problems, ethical and otherwise -- no matter how it's delivered.
Source : The News & Record
www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060725/NEWSREC010201
North Carolina can avoid a death-penalty standoff over medical ethics if physicians aren't asked to participate in executions. Or, better, if it abolishes capital punishment.
North Carolina uses lethal injection, and state law requires a "surgeon or physician" to attend. But American Medical Association policy prohibits physicians from taking part in executions -- a position the N.C. Medical Board tentatively adopted Friday.
The board recognizes the difference between attending and participating in an execution. The courts may not.
In April, U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard -- responding to a
contention by condemned North Carolina inmate Willie Brown Jr. that lethal injection potentially causes a painful death -- allowed the execution to proceed only if the state provided "personnel with sufficient medical training" to make sure Brown would be unconscious before and during the administration of the fatal drugs. "Should plaintiff exhibit effects of consciousness at any time during the execution, such personnel shall immediately provide appropriate medical care so as to insure plaintiff is
immediately returned to an unconscious state."
Brown was executed April 21, but the issues raised by his case have new life. Since then, a federal court in Missouri issued an order to that state that "a board certified anesthesiologist shall be responsible for the mixing of all drugs which are used in the lethal injection process."
North Carolina says an anesthesiologist isn't needed, that registered nurses, paramedics and emergency medical technicians are qualified to meet Judge Howard's directive.
Dr. Orin F. Guidry, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, does not support that assertion.
"If the courts demand that inmates be sufficiently anesthetized, then I would have to agree with the (Missouri) court that the only way to assure that would be to have an anesthesiologist prepare and administer the drugs, carefully observe the inmate and all pertinent monitors, and finally to integrate all this information," he wrote in a June 30 message to ASA members.
The next court ruling in North Carolina could very well echo the Missouri decision, leaving a death-row impasse: Judges say executions by lethal injection can't go forward without physicians; physicians refuse for reasons of medical ethics. Guidry advised anesthesiologists to "steer clear" of executions, adding: "The legal system has painted itself into this corner,
and it is not our obligation to get it out."
There are two ways North Carolina can stay out of a corner. One is to devise a new way of putting condemned inmates to death -- one that doesn't call for the services of a physician. The other is to eliminate the death penalty.
The second option is infinitely more practical. Capital punishment, applied inconsistently and prone to fatal error, poses too many problems, ethical and otherwise -- no matter how it's delivered.
Source : The News & Record
www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060725/NEWSREC010201