Death penalty in countries

source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html

Leonidas Koniaris

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7269-execution-by-injection-far-from-painless.html#.UyA4_5hFDAU

They examined post-mortem blood levels of anaesthetic and believe that prisoners may have been capable of feeling pain in almost 90% of cases and may have actually been conscious when they were put to death in over 40% of cases.

Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the US, 788 people have been killed by lethal injection. The procedure typically involves the injection of three substances: first, sodium thiopental to induce anaesthesia, followed by pancuronium bromide to relax muscles, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

But doctors and nurses are prohibited by healthcare professionals' ethical guidelines from participating in or assisting with executions, and the technicians involved have no specific training in administering anaesthetics.

"My impression is that lethal injection as practiced in the US now is no more humane than the gas chamber or electrocution, which have both been deemed inhumane," says Leonidas Koniaris, a surgeon in Miami and one of the authors on the paper. He is not, he told New Scientist, against the death penalty per se.

But Kyle Janek, a Texas senator and anaesthesiologist, and a vocal advocate of the death penalty, insists that levels of anaesthetic are more than adequate. He says that an inmate will typically receive up to 3 grams - about 10 times the amount given before surgery. "I can attest with all medical certainty that anyone receiving that massive dose will be under anaesthesia," he said in a recent editorial.

Jim and the Indians analogy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/

modern society and capital punishment

Methods

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2014