Category: Ethical Commentary

Death Row Doctoring: The Dicey Medical Ethics of Prison Executions

Medscape

Seema Yasmin

I had seen people die, but I had never watched a person be killed—until I moved to Texas. It was a warm day in September 2014 when my editor sent me to death row in Huntsville. I had joined the Dallas Morning News as a reporter that summer, never expecting my job to land me in a small, musty room overlooking an execution chamber.

Through green metal bars and a window, I watched Lisa Ann Coleman lying on a crucifix-shaped gurney, yellow leather straps wrapped around her arms and legs. Coleman, a 38-year-old African American woman, was scheduled to die at 6 PM for the murder of a 9-year-old boy in 2004. A microphone hung from the ceiling of the execution chamber and hovered an inch or two above her round brown face. . . [Full text]

 

Should American doctors participate in executions?

BioEdge

Michael Cook*

The American state of Arkansas executed four prisoners in April. They were given a lethal injection with a three-drug cocktail, a procedure which requires some medical skills. Should doctors take part in such executions?

The consensus amongst medical ethicists is No. The American Medical Association insists that participation violates a fundamental principal of medicine: do no harm. However, many of the 31 states with capital punishment require the presence of a doctor during the execution.

In an unusual intervention in the bitter debate, cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar has written an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that the presence of doctors is ethical. . . [Full text]

Why It’s O.K. for Doctors to Participate in Executions

New York Times

Sandeep Jauhaur

On Thursday, Arkansas executed a 51-year-old convicted murderer named Ledell Lee, the first of four prisoners the state intends to execute by the end of the month. That would set a pace rarely if ever matched in the modern history of American capital punishment. The state’s rationale for its intended spree is morbidly pragmatic: The stock of one of its three execution drugs, the sedative midazolam, will expire at the end of April.

The three drugs in Arkansas’s execution protocol — midazolam; vecuronium bromide, a paralytic used during surgery that halts breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart — are administered intravenously. The execution procedure therefore requires the insertion of catheters, controlled injection of lethal drugs and monitoring of a prisoner’s vital signs to confirm death. This makes it important that a doctor be present to assist in some capacity with the killing. . . [Full text]

 

Appeal to sound medicine, not conscience rights: expert

Defenders of life called to polish arguments for the right to life

BC Catholic

Deborah Gyapong

U.S. physician and theologian is warning appeals to conscience rights may no longer be effective because they appear to pit physicians against their patients.

Instead, defenders of conscience rights must polish their rhetorical arguments in defence of good professional judgment and sound medicine, said Dr. Farr Curlin March 16. He was giving the annual Weston lecture sponsored by Augustine College.

A palliative care physician and co-director of the Theology, Medicine and Culture Initiative at Duke University in Raleigh, NC, Curlin has been called as an expert witness in the case of five Ontario doctors who are challenging the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s policy that would force physicians to make effective referrals on abortion, euthanasia, and other procedures they may find morally objectionable.

“The policy is outrageous and unprecedented,” Curlin said. “It’s also incoherent.” . . . [Full text]

 

Conscientious objection in the pharmacy

Religious guidance may put UK pharmacists at risk of punishment, says C + D author… but what about Aussie pharmacists?

AJP.com

Seshtyn Paola

According to the UK publication Chemist + Druggist, in 2013 the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) banned a pharmacist from providing emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) for three years because he had given a patient “a distressing explanation of why his religion regarded EHC as morally wrong”.

Now the Council is bringing in new standards – due to come into effect on May 1 – proposing that pharmacy professionals should not be able to refuse services based on their religion, personal values or beliefs.

The GPhC also suggests that referral to another pharmacist should not be an option, reports C + D. . . [Full text]