The AMA and many other medical groups have long opposed doctors having any role in executions, including monitoring a prisoner's vital signs or giving technical advice.
"They should not even certify death," because if they find the patient has not died it would lead to more drugs or electrocution to kill the patient, Miles said.
"The ethical standard is pretty much universal," said Leonard Rubenstein, a lawyer who is director of Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights. "It's the same reason physicians can't be involved in coerced interrogations," or help certify prisoners as psychiatrically fit to be executed, he said.
It's a voluntary rule and no doctors have been reprimanded or defrocked for taking part in executions.
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A voluntary rule? If only victims had the same consideration when they are murdered.
I'm sure there are doctors that would have volunteered to assist.
Just another frontal attack on the death penalty. Get out ole sparky!!
Doctors who have a problem with it should not be forced to do it. Imagine if what the pro-abortion lobby wants happens: doctors being forced to offer abortion as one of their services.
I've got the answer.
Put Morales on a feeding tube and then deny food and hydration. I'm told it's humane and painless.
I have no doubt that the judge was aware of the medical associations' prohibitions against participating in an execution. That's part of the plan to make executions by lethal injection impossible to carry out.
The irony is that the original 3-drug sequence that the judge worried would cause pain is EXACTLY the one used by Dr. Kevorkian to kill his "patient" on "60 Minutes" several years ago. Strange that supporters of assisted suicide have absolutely NO problem using the 3-drug sequence on patients, but somehow it's suddenly excruciating when applied to convicted murderers!
Go back to firing squads. Who cares.
I used to be an Army medic, I'll friggin do it for travel expenses.
Let me get this straight, there is no shortage of doctors to perform abortions and now in Oregon doctors will be able to euthanize so what is the problem with finding a doctor willing to execute? You would think there was a waiting list.
I find it hard to believe these doctors didn't realize what they were going to be doing until it was time to do it.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Priscilla Ray
6624 Fannin, Suite 2120, Houston, TX 77030
713-797-0112; FAX 713-790-9578
Steven Miles
Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School
E-Mail: miles001@umn.edu
Leonard Rubenstein
Human Scum for Human Rights (... yes, I made that up)
lrubenstein@phrusa.org
Terri Winchell
Morales choked Winchell with a belt from the back seat, but when the belt snapped, he bludgeoned her 23 times with a hammer. She struggled so hard patches of hair were torn from her scalp, according to the San Joaquin district attorney's office.
Morales dragged the unconscious girl into a nearby vineyard, raped her and stabbed her four times in the chest. Winchell's body was found two days later after Ortega confessed to police.
Amazing how there's a dilema whether this man suffers or not. Yet his victim suffered terribly.
It's BS, they found a couple of activist liberal doctors to raise the ethics issue.
Hope the fellow dies in prison by another inmate by the weeks end to stop the torture the courts and these doctors are causing the family of the murdered girl.
But, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and starvation of a patient are just fine.
It is only when a scum sucking, worthless SOB that society has judged merits a death penalty that the doctors get all huffy over political concerns "ethics".
Needless to say, this means going back to a time where justice was swift and public. In this modern with internet communications a random number of people can be chosen to carry out the deed, but only one will have the correct code to complete the execution. Maybe one of the jurors who convicted him should serve as the officer of the state to execute.
"Morales' lawyer argued that the inmate would suffer cruel and unusual punishment if not sedated properly. "
It was NOT cruel and unusual punishment for him to bash a girl's head in with a hammer, choke her, rape her and stab her repeatedly, all as a favor for someone?
Sick S.O.B.s, and the lawyers that represent them! Ken Starr is a P.O.S. for taking this case.
They could find a anesthesiologist to do it if they wanted to, hell outsource it to India...
ping
We're upside down. Makes me want to wash my hands of it all but that's means "they" win.
ping