THEY SAID NOTHING in so many words.

THEY SAID NOTHING in so many words.

Some of the suggestions display total ignorance of what they were investigating. It is clear to any rational person or rational Goon, if there is such a thing, that Mr Diaz suffered lots of pain while his insides were suffering the effects of a corrosive. It is equally clear to any rational human being and Goon that the executioner was way over his head, like

Oberscharf was when Mengele taught his "spritzen" at Auschwitz. Never once in this report was the word "doctor" or "nurse" mentioned.

The problem is that Florida is so wedded to killing folks that they have entered a kiuckuck fairyland where the condemned is metamorphosed to cold meat; a doctor is not needed to manipulate cold meat. This demonizing of the inmate is at the heart of the problem.

Some of the suggestions are quite bizarre; reapply a tourniquet to see if the veins are "tight"; stopping the procedure to make sure the inmate is unconscious; that defeats the use of thiopental because its effects wear off quickly. They also suggest giving multiple small doses of thiopental at intervals, which will make the procedure prolonged torture. Keeping the hooded executioner in another room, so he cannot observe the victim is another, as is the dumb suggestion to shorten the tubes (which they cannot do because the executioner is not in the same room).

The Commission also stated that they could not determine if Mr Diaz suffered any pain!

What do they need to convince them ?

The evidence was clear and convincing.

I suppose that they would deny that there are airplanes overhead because if God wanted man to fly he would give humankind wings!

Rather than answering questions, the Commission created more questions; if the commission saw a house burning down, they would deny it saying it just a pig being barbecued. I cannot understand the intellectual constipation displayed by the doctors on the commission-- assuming that they did not disagree with the final report. The implication, without saying so directly was that killing this way is not a medical procedure. Let us see:

They use drugs only obtainable from a pharmacy - only a doctor or
PA can do this. The procurer must have a DEA registration
number. Goons do not have one.

They use a gurney that has no other use than medical

The needles and intercath are medical equipment. The only other
use is veterinary medicine, and dentistry.

In order to kill "properly" the executioner has to get medical
knowledge --- not civil engineering knowledge.? Since physicians
and nurses cannot supply that knowledge, where does an executioner get that knowledge, from an accountant?

The concept of state sanctioned murder by drugs is not new; Socrates was murdered by drinking hemlock, and the ancient Romans toyed with the idea. New York State thought of injection of morphine, but rejected the idea for the electric chair.

The Nazis played with a variety of drugs in their T-4 program, and the syringe was in the doctor's hands. At Auschwitz Mengele devised a "spritzen" method, much simpler than in Florida, and about 20,000 people were murdered that way in Auschwitz, and thousands in other camps. The procedure was quick, cheap, and easy to perform, with two Goons holding the victim in a chair and an SS man injecting. Death allegedly took place in less than a minute, and required about one minute's learning. It was painful, but then again dead meat has no pain.

The British Royal Commission in 1952 rejected the idea of a three drug cocktail in favor of hanging, which they ultimately abolished in the late 1960s. Dr Chapman-- then Oklahoma's Medical Examiner--- devised the method currently in use. The state's electric chair was broken down. and although the legislature voted to get a?gas chamber, but the cost was prohibitive, so they asked Dr Chapman. In theory, it was a good idea, but in practice there are more and more problems as time goes on.

The only way to preserve the practice is to ignore the Hippocratic Oath, which is unacceptable. Without proper training,? more executions will be botched, and more horrors will be seen.?

Perhaps worse is the slippery slope on which we are starting to slide. The loss of our intellectual integrity is at stake. Once we start to devalue human life, we lose our own humanness, and Florida is well on that road, along with the other states, some quicker than others. What happened to Mr Padilla is an example of demonizing in the extreme; the same mentality denies that Mr Diaz suffered pain while being tortured and murdered by the good folks of Florida, and by extension of all the USA

G M Larkin MD
Charlotte NC USA