U.S. Executions by Lethal Injection May Not Be Humane

THURSDAY, April 14 (HealthDay News) -- Prisoner executions by lethal injection in the United States may not be painless or humane, and may not even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals.

So claims a research letter in this week's issue of The Lancet.

The authors concluded that prisoners executed by lethal injection may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering as they died because they weren't properly sedated. Anesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimize the prisoner's suffering.

Lethal injection involves sequential administration of sodium thiopental for anesthesia, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and then potassium chloride to stop the heart and cause death.  Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine analyzed execution protocol information from Texas and Virginia, which account for about 45 percent of executions in the United States. They found that executioners had no training in anesthesia.

It is an execution, not a root canal.

AS we have read in the New York Times and other Mass Media that starvation is the most humane. It's not only painless, it also gives one a sense of euphoria. Killing Terri Schindler by dehydration and starvation is A-okay. I propose that we replace lethal injection with starvation and dehydration, since that has been declared to be humane.

They also need to be sure to swab the injection site with alcohol to avoid the danger of infection. Do you have to be an electrician to pull the switch on an electric chair, or a carpenter to conduct a hanging? I object to the idea that this is a medical procedure. I say give Bob the janitor a crash course on how to use a syringe and away we go..