US lethal injection 'is not humane'

James Meikle, health correspondent
Friday April 15, 2005
The Guardian

Murderers executed by lethal injection in the United States may have suffered excruciating pain because they were not properly anaesthetised, researchers said yesterday.

A study published in the Lancet analysed information from Texas and Virginia, where about 45% of executions take place, and found executioners had no training in anaesthesia and administered the drugs remotely from behind a screen without monitoring for anaesthesia.

The researchers, led by Leonidas Koniaris of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, also analysed autopsy reports from 49 executions in Arizona, Georgia and North and South Carolina. In 43 cases concentrations of the anaesthetic in the blood were lower than required for surgery, and in 21 of those the levels were consistent with people retaining awareness.

It was possible, said the researchers, "that some of these inmates were fully aware during their executions. We certainly cannot conclude that these inmates were unconscious and insensate. However, with no monitoring, and with the use of the paralytic agent, any suffering of the inmate would be undetectable."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1460061,00.html

was no suffering? I think that agent in and of itself constitutes torture.

:)

but then any execution is more humane than the murder of the victim that precipitated the death penalty conviction..

I am not a death penalty proponent..but I think the lethal injection issue is more about "sanitizing" the killing, so that th epeople administering it don't feel so badly....I doubt that it's to make it "easier" on the prisoner.

a man beheaded by an axe on the street just down the road from this intermet cafe in North London.........

I tought it might be a "Sharia Law Comes to London" spood story....but it was just an (alleged) nutter.......

did it right in front of a construction site and passersby walking down the street.

Hardhats grabbed pipes and tools an tried to run over and stop him, but couldn't get there in time. He was caught calmly walking back down the road with the bloody axe.

Whatever happend to him?

(besides the obvious...)

been sectioned.

Police probing background links to the victim's family. Some sex-offender allegations against the victim going back to the 1980s.

Local journos asking round about someone wanting to get the film rights for a blockbuster.........

for years, and has even found its way into several court cases.

Underlying it all is the simple fact that many DP proponents simply don't care if it's humane or not (some preferring a more inhumane method anyway) and the anti-DP proponents (like me) claiming that any execution is inhumane simply because it is an execution.

The whole idea of a "humane" execution is an oxymoron to begin with, and inventions like the electric chair, lethal gas, lethal injection... that claim to make it more "humane" are simply smoke and mirrors to avoid making it obvious that we are killing people.

At least the guillotine was sold for its efficiency, not its humanity.