Today's
Stories
April 20, 2006
Justin E.H. Smith
Doctors and Lethal Injection
April 19, 2006
P. Sainath
More Kids? Pay More for Your Water
Norman
Solomon
When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch
on Iran
Anthony Papa
When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards
for the Rich and Poor in New York
Mike
Ferner
Movement Blues
Stanley Heller
The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later:
Still No Justice
Rifundazione
"We Defeated Berlusconi"
Christopher
Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
Alexander
Cockburn
The Pulitzer Farce
Website of
the Day
Bunker
Busters: the Movie
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
20, 2006
"Appropriate Medical Care"
and the Paradox of Sanitized Execution
Doctors and Lethal
Injection
By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH
In
a recent ruling, Judge Malcolm Howard of the Federal District Court
in Greenville, North Carolina, determined that the execution by
lethal injection of Willie Brown Jr. may not proceed unless appropriate
medical supervision of the process can be ensured. This ruling followed
upon the presentation of evidence that all too often executioners
without medical training do a poor job of administering the cocktail
of chemicals required, and that as a consequence the prisoner often
suffers needlessly.
North
Carolina prison officials have been ordered to tell the court by
this week how they will comply with its order requiring medically
trained personnel to ensure that Brown is unconscious during his
execution, currently scheduled for April 21. The officials have
been asked a question they cannot possibly answer, and we can only
hope that their conundrum will lead to a stay of execution for the
prisoner.
As
Adam Liptak reported recently in the New York Times ("Judges
Set Hurdles for Lethal Injection," April 12, 2006), increasingly
the drug protocol used nationwide since the 1970s --originally devised
by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections in consultation with the
state medical examiner-- is being denounced by critics as too complex
and as medically unjustifiable.
The
first drug administered in this procedure is the barbiturate sodium
thiopental. As Liptak reports, "properly administered... it
is sufficient to render an inmate unconscious for many hours, if
not to kill him." (Sodium thiopental, it is interesting to
note, is the sole drug administered in the routine euthanization
of pets and farm animals.)
The
second drug is pancuronium bromide which, if administered by itself,
would bring about paralysis without unconsciousness. If the prisoner
suffers after this drug is injected, his anguish can generally not
be detected by external observers since he is unable to move and
thus unable to register pain. The bromide thus serves to obscure
from view the effect of the third and final drug, potassium chloride,
which causes the heart to stop beating but also causes unimaginable
pain while travelling through the veins.
If
the first drug is administered correctly, it is sufficient to render
the prisoner fully unconscious and to cancel out the painful effects
of the two drugs to follow. But poorly trained prison staff often
choose the wrong spot on the prisoner's body to inject the barbiturate,
resulting in inadequate distribution throughout his system.
Why
not, then, include well-trained medical personnel in the procedure?
The American Medical Association's ethics code explicitly forbids
physicians to prescribe the drugs to be used in execution, to select
intravenous sites, to administer the drugs, and to pronounce death.
As Liptak reports, the code is not legally binding, and anonymous
participation by doctors is not uncommon. Collusion by doctors in
earlier stage of the process is also a well-known fact, from the
various experts who spoke in favor of the guillotine in the 1790s
to the Oklahoma state medical examiner's oversight of the recipe
for lethal injection in the 1970s.
It
is not clear whether Judge Howard was aware of the AMA's code of
ethics when he ordered that the execution of Willie Brown Jr. could
not proceed without the guarantee of supervision by personnel capable
of "providing appropriate medical care" should Mr. Brown
wake up. The judge did not say that the personnel had to be licensed
physicians, but clearly the only other possibility would be to invite
unlicensed individuals purporting to be medical experts. This would
be to condone medical fraud, a felony in all 50 states.
If
the personnel are licensed physicians, though, the problem of course
is that the "appropriate medical care" they provide could
only consist in taking measures to promote the continuation of Mr.
Brown's life. Such is the reasoning, in any case, behind many legal
defeats of physician-assisted suicide over the years. For instance
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals argued in 1997 that the government
has legitimate interests in prohibiting such assistance since it
is already obligated to "protect... the medical profession's
integrity and ethics and maintain... physicians' role as their patients'
healers."
While
the individual physician who assists at an execution may only be
violating a code of ethics, and not breaking a law, it is clear
that a state that refuses to legalize physician-assisted suicide
in part on the grounds that this would destroy the integrity and
ethics of medicine cannot in turn legally require the participation
of a physician in an execution. Execution is something that can
only be carried out beyond the bounds of proper medical practice.
To implicate physicians is to ask them to cease to live up to standards
of conduct that the state otherwise expects them to meet.
This
issue has only come up recently because lethal injection, unlike
firing squads and electrocution, simulates medical procedure. But
what is happening here is no more "medical" than a shantytown
abortion, and if a clumsy prison guard botches the job and the inmate
writhes in agony for some minutes, this is not so much a glitch
in an otherwise orderly medical procedure as a reminder that to
execute is, and always has been, to do harm, and it thus excludes
anyone bound by the Hippocratic Oath. Ever the development of the
Guillotine, pseudo-humanists have been trying to make killing something
other than it can ever possibly be, and more than 200 years later
the paradox and futility of this effort is not a bit less glaring.
The
state has only two options: either to stop feigning humanism, or
to stop executing people. Judge Howard's refusal to permit a lethal
injection to proceed without medical participation, and his simultaneous
inability to arrange for this participation, reveals the worsening
paralysis of a system that tries to play both options at once.
And
the worse, the better. Capital punishment in America will eventually
collapse under the weight of such paradoxes-- unless of course those
people have their way who openly see execution as a fitting occasion
to inflict harm and thereby to exact revenge. This is the principle
of capital punishment under Shariah law, and under the absolute
monarchies of early modern Europe, where men were flayed in public
squares, or torn to pieces by horses made to run in opposite directions.
An awesome spectacle, to be sure, but one that does not fit well
with our constitutional opposition to cruel and unusual punishment.
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