What do they follow protocols like alcohol swabs and sterile needles when performing a lethal injection? The subject is about to die.
In: Biology
Theatrics—same reason they use lethal injection in the first place instead of shooting them in the head repeatedly even though lethal injection has a much higher failure rate and is considerably more painful. They wrap the ending of a human life (which, even if you think is justified, is fundamentally an act of state violence) in a package that makes it seem like a medical procedure, which it is not. The alcohol swab is there for the same reason one of the chemicals in the cocktail of poisons (pancuronium bromide) is a paralytic that does not significantly hasten death or reduce pain in any way but makes the subject unable to thrash around or scream—to make the whole thing look as clean and tidy as possible.
I should make two things very clear too. I reiterate—just because something is made to look like a medical procedure does not mean it is a medical procedure. Execution is not a medical procedure no matter how well it’s dressed up to look like one—it is as clear a violation of the Hippocratic Oath as there ever was. The American Medical Association’s code of medical ethics specifically bars any member physician from participating in any way in a legally-authorized execution. The execution staff is not made up of physicians but mostly of prison staff. The people physically administering the execution are sometimes phlebotomists, sometimes EMTs or paramedics, sometimes former military members with field medicine experience, but they are NOT doctors, and they are not administering a medical procedure, they are killing a person. Secondly, lethal injection in the United States should not be compared to euthanasia of pets. Euthanasia IS done by a trained medical professional with the express intent of being painless. The drug cocktail used for pet euthanasia, phenytoin/pentobarbital, is totally different than the drugs used for execution, and do work very well.
Latest Answers