Wednesday 14 February 2007

Florida - Of course the Commission will conclude that there were no problems with the execution process, and that the world was flat.



Of course the Commission will conclude that there were no problems with the execution process, and that the world was flat.

It is unbelievable that this protocol was written in a civilized society--- instructions to kill another human being is never easy, although the actual act of killing by other methods (a bullet to the head) does not require more than five minutes training-- where to aim the bullet.

Jack Kevorkian MD was able to perform a painless murder, as shown on television ("60 Minutes") but he thirty plus years of animal experimentation and human venipuncture as a pathologist in high regard; did the Goons consult him-- now serving a life sentence? He;ll no! What does a doctor know about injections?

The whole debate is an example of how naive, just plain stupid, sadistic and ignorant the officials at Florida Department of Corrections are. They might have succeeded with fooling the public that murdering a human being is both like killing a sick pet, and as peaceful as medical anesthesia, complete with hollywood props, masked executioners, and hospital greens.

IT AIN'T SO!

Now 36 states are in a catch 22; they are using a method of murder they know little about, and are too dumb to realize that. Perish the thought that anyone in Corrections consult the medical literature! The grisley procedure requires a physician's input, and few physicians are willing to help.

And having a physician -- neurologist or anesythesiologist -- monitoring an ECG machine is like using an electron microscope to find the virus that causes colds. It is all for illusion, since I doubt that any diagnosis of pain can be made, given the circumstances, and a dying patternto begin with.

Hollywood gone awry and the results are deadly and ugly.

G M Larkin MD
Charlotte NCUSA

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Dr. Larkin, as always, for providing your insightful comments and some much needed sanity.

Dr. Larkin writes:

It is unbelievable that this protocol was written in a civilized society--- instructions to kill another human being is never easy, although the actual act of killing by other methods (a bullet to the head) does not require more than five minutes training-- where to aim the bullet.

I have not been able to get that protocol out of my mind since I read it: An odd, bloodless document, it is an illustration of what Hannah Arendt called 'the Banality of Evil.'

Actually boring in its repetitiveness, to the point that one almost forgets its purpose; and yet, for all the repetition (especially within the paragraphs concerning the mixing of the chemicals) if one reads it with any knowledge whatsoever of recent FL death penalty history, the sinking realization - nay, 100% certainty - that things are bound to go horribly, horribly wrong becomes inescapable.

Then, as one reads on, a perusal of the post-execution checklist, which allows only for the slightest hints of 'mishaps' (the media's default go-to synonym for any number of gruesome, agonizing human-error-induced, needless execution-related suffering) to be recorded, the additional realization that whoever* wrote the protocol also anticipated that things would go wrong, sinks in.

*Why should there be an acceptance of the policy of "no one really knows who writes these protocols"?