Posted on 05/30/2006 11:14:37 AM PDT by KevinNuPac
Walker, the challenger, talks like a lifetime Democrat. I flatly do not believe his statement that he was a Republican who changed parties. That's the same old tedious liberal Butt Monkey lie that we hear every day on talk radio -- "I'm a conservative but..." or "I served in the Marine Corps, but..." In Walker's case, the lie is "I was a Republican but the party got away from its limited government principles." And that's why he joined the big government party. Right.
Uncle Johnny.
That was my first thought, although Uncle Johnny did not have the good fortune to have a wife motivated to rescue him.
Sharing your opinion of AP, I must say, the most sypathetic and the nicest, kindest of the press types I saw at Pinellas Park was the AP photog. I bet a small fraction of his shots were used, the rest discarded.
When I was tired, dejected on Easter, he came up quietly and put some candies in my hand and slipped away.
Diametric opposite of the AP we all see...
Aww! It's especially nice to hear about an individual whose kind heart puts him above the crowd -- in this case, above the policies of his employer. AP is loathesome corporately, but you can never tell about a given individual who works there.
Prayers sent! Follow all the good advice from your FRiends, simplemines.
Bump this
If convicted murderer Angel Maturino Resendiz, known as the Railroad Killer, is put to death on Tuesday, he will owe his quiet end to medical science. Had doctors not concocted a lethal series of infusions more than 20 years ago, Texas prisoners still would be dying by electrocution.The profession charged with healing has worked to refine the business of killing since French surgeon Joseph Guillotin sought a more civilized execution for the condemned. In the more than 200 years since Dr. Guillotin's name became synonymous with beheading an "e" was later added to the machine named for him medical professionals have given guidance in making the death penalty more compassionate, whether by gas chamber, electric chair or, more recently, drugs.
Yet medical ethicists long ago determined this is wrong. Execution, which is hardly in the best interest of the patient, is not the practice of medicine, and doctors are sworn to save lives, not take them. With the latest court challenges to lethal injection challenges that cite the possibility of significant pain for the immobilized prisoner the criminal justice system might need medicine's help to keep the death penalty constitutional. Physicians could again find themselves at the nexus of two conflicting values: society's moral and legal obligation to execute without cruelty, and a doctor's sworn obligation to do no harm.
"The basic question is whether medicine has a role in addressing more competent and compassionate ways of executing people," Peter Clark, a medical ethicist at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, wrote this spring in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics.
Dr. Clark is a theologian. To him, the answer is clear. "I was appalled that the medical profession was even involved in this," he said in an interview.
Many physicians, though, are more ambivalent. In 2001, a research team described a survey of 1,000 randomly selected doctors from rosters provided by the American Medical Association, the professional society that has unequivocally said involvement in execution is unethical. The doctors were asked whether they would be willing to participate in 10 aspects of lethal injection, eight of which have been deemed wrong for physicians.
To researchers' surprise, 41 percent said they would perform at least one of the actions, which included placing the intravenous lines or supervising the administration of injections.
What about personally giving the final drugs? "I suspected that I'd find that no physician would be willing," said Dr. Neil Farber of Christiana Care Health System in Delaware. Instead, 19 percent said they would.
These doctors usually were not motivated by the belief that they might relieve the suffering of someone who was going to die anyway, Dr. Farber said, though some felt that way. Overwhelmingly, those physicians willing to kill cited their obligations to a state that has said execution is legal and correct.
"They're not seeing it as a conflict," Dr. Farber said. "This is a duty to society."
So it is not that surprising that corrections officials have found physicians willing to participate in capital punishment some states even require their presence. Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recently found four physicians and one nurse who would discuss their reasoning. Dr. Gawande wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in March that these medical professionals typically didn't make a conscious decision to assume the role of executioner.
"Virtually all of them were brought into the death chamber to pronounce death," he said last week.
Merely being present seems straightforward enough. But executions don't always go smoothly. Technicians can have trouble finding a suitable vein. The dosage of the drug may be inadequate.
"Suddenly all eyes turn to you," Dr. Gawande said.
Their participation was an incremental journey, as in many descents into questionable behavior.
Dr. Gawande supports the death penalty, as do the majority of doctors surveyed. But after talking to those physicians who have witnessed it, he says he began to wonder whether capital punishment is possible without medical supervision.
After 859 lethal injections, it is viewed almost as a rote act. "The trouble is," he said, "there is a large percentage of the time that there is some complication in that regimented approach that requires medical expertise to sort it out."
In 1982, during the first lethal injection in a Texas state prison, two doctors reportedly were on hand only to pronounce death. Yet they were asked advice about the proper injection site, Dr. Gawande said, and the prison official incorrectly mixed the chemicals.
What if a physician finds a heartbeat when it is time to declare a prisoner dead? Offer advice on how to finish him off?
If executions cannot be completed without physicians or nurses, Dr. Gawande believes the death penalty should be abandoned. Tending to the problems of lethal injection is not a doctor's job, he said, and violates public trust. He even would like to see physician involvement legally banned.
"Since the total responsibility for execution rests with the criminal justice system, it's up to the criminal justice system to deal with it," said Dr. Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Miles has examined the circumstances that lead doctors to have a role in torture and execution.
Corrections officials and the public desire a clinical patina to the administration of the death penalty, he said, largely to make people feel more comfortable. "We're trying to make it sterile," he said. "We're trying to tame execution."
The legal question now is whether it has been tamed enough to meet the requirements set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
Dr. Miles does believe that the current three-drug combination is probably a painful death, masked by an induced paralysis. If prisoners are suffocating, they would have the feeling of being buried alive, he said. If they are improperly anesthetized, the potassium chloride would send a searing pain through the veins as it flowed toward the heart.
As a human being, these scenarios bother him, but as a doctor, he would not offer a solution.
"The question of whether executions should be pain-free is a social policy question," he said, not a medical one.
For that reason, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, believes that the profession should excuse itself from the entire debate. If people want flawless executions, he said, then states should create professional executioners.
"The state wants them there," Dr. Caplan said of doctors, "so the state can feel more comfortable."
Dr. Miles puts it this way: If a nation decided to punish adulterers by stoning, it would be wrong for a doctor to give the condemned anesthesia beforehand to lessen the pain. That would send a message of tacit approval and soothe the conscience of those imposing the sentence.
Because a white coat can make capital punishment seem more palatable, some doctors who are involved with executions ultimately find themselves troubled. After the introduction of the guillotine, executions became routine in revolutionary France. Dr. Guillotin grew appalled by his infamy from a killing device. But execution was by then the will of the people, and beyond the influence of medicine.
E-mail lbeil@dallasnews.com lbeil@dallasnews.com
Arthur Caplan proves the point for us here, once again, by being against the execution of duly convicted criminals but for the execution of an innocent Terri Schiavo. He is against even the most merciful, painless death for the criminals, but was fine with torturing Terri for 13 days. He is against the death penalty, but he favors death for unborn babies, disabled persons, old folks, chronically ill patients and depression sufferers who think about suicide.
Iyer, who is employed at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center, filed an affidavit for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his attempts to help Terri's parents prevent Terri's death.
Iyer said that, after one visit by Michael in Terri's room for 20 minutes with the door shut, Iyer found Terri lethargic and "crying hysterically." She checked Terri's blood sugar levels and they were barely showing any reading on the glucometer, she indicated. She also saw a vial of "insulin concealed in the trash bin."
Nurse Who Helped Expose Terri Schiavo's Former Husband Faces Attack
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Terri on the road to recovery before the second stage began.
China Will Not Pursue Criminal Penalties for Sex-Selection Abortion
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In other words, some busybody with no legal standing can file a nuisance complaint with the Florida Department of Health and put a nurse at risk of her job. So what bureau do we call in Massachusetts to investigate this busybody's inflammatory statement about Carla Iyer?
Notice what the FDOH does NOT investigate: the mistreatment of Terri Schiavo on orders from Michael Schiavo, as reported by eyewitness Iyer. A guardian (Michael) does NOT have the right to dictate medical treatment contrary to the best interests of his ward.
Bush's GOP, however, is making a Democratic pitch to libertarian-minded voters more credible. The Republican Party is rapidly losing its identity as the party of fiscal responsibility and small government. And Republican intrusions into private and local affairs -- think Terri Schiavo -- are making Democrats look comparatively restrained.
Hurting the Ones You (Ought to) Love
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... Congressional Democrats, too, voted to intervene in the Schiavo affair and hardly stand to gain from the incident.)
This intervention myth is a problem. The critics try to have it both ways, and are wrong about both. It was local judicial intervention, not Congressional, that destroyed a private medical decision. These writers take it for granted that Terri should have been put to death, i.e., they bought the whole death culture case. We need to rebut both points.
I don't at all agree with their implied point that intervention for Terri was bad politics. Failing Terri; failing to save her was the bad politics (and bad governing).
This Sager fellow needs an education. He gets all his points from the Death Cult. Notice that the gentle, pro-lifers are the ones whose rhetoric is called venomous. Hynes compliments Sager as exceptionally bright and nicely libertarian. Not in this case! He hasn't thought through anything. He might as well be a puppet dangling from the fingers of George Felos.
Well, I see MS and others are busy rooting out everyone who tried to do the right thing by Terri. Carla Iyer did the absolutely correct thing by filing a police report after that insulin episode. They fired her, probably blackballed her, now they want her license to practice. I didn't see the interview on CNN, but I'm sure she was professional, and kept to the facts. Of course the facts are damning towards MS, Greer, etc.
Greer puts a whole new meaning to "blind justice".
I suppose that the Pinellas Cty Sheriff's Dept. has pressured the licensure board into punishing Carla. Racketeering in Florida is a fact of life. I'm sure Michael Schiavo is also pressuring them to ruin Carla's life too. What for? Terri's still going to be dead whether they ruin Carla's life or not.
Terri wasn't enough after all. They are pure evil and sadistic. If Terri's wishes were followed through, why the ongoing crusade to ruin other lives?
This is why Jeb Bush will never be president or vice president. Florida is the racketeering state.
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