Why not hanging for carrying out the death penalty?

Thermal said:
I don't think your quite following my reasoning. This mother ****** over here *points to convicted murderer* is going to be executed. The state has things like rope and electric chairs. Can it be argued (whether or not you agree) that harm, in the form of suffering, can be averted with a doctor's professional medical intervention?
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I follow your reasoning and I disagree with it. The doctor in your hypothetical is not going to conclude well, he's going to be killed anyway so it'll be better if I do it. Modern medical ethics are pretty clear, particularly since certain things that happened in the middle of the last century. "It can be argued" by lay people, sure, but healthcare professionals have already had that argument and decided it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I follow your reasoning and I disagree with it. The doctor in your hypothetical is not going to conclude well, he's going to be killed anyway so it'll be better if I do it. Modern medical ethics are pretty clear, particularly since certain things that happened in the middle of the last century. "It can be argued" by lay people, sure, but healthcare professionals have already had that argument and decided it.
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Are you saying physician assisted euthanasia has never been carried out? How about deliberately "pulling the plug" or even doing nothing in the presence of a DNR wish?

Eta: re: DNR: doing nothing while someone dies in front of you that you could almost certainly save is absolutely Doing Harm, if only by omission.
 
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The whole "But my job has... A CODE" thing is guess just strikes me as kinda eyerollingly quaint.

Times and society and laws change. IT Staff and Starbucks Baristas and 3rd Class Telephone Sanitizers can't point to something a random Greek said a few thousands years ago and worry about how to balance the real world with it.

I never get on well with professions that act like they are secret societies that get to put their own internal mythology about how great they are or are "supposed" to act against the real world.

If society decides executing people is good for society (and again only talking in that context) then doctors handwringing over their oh so special "oath" means exactly as much as any other profession dealing with society wanting something.

99% of society gets along just fine with just a vague concept of "professionalism" without needing some pompous elevated quippy "oath" to worry about.
 
Thermal said:
Are you saying physician assisted euthanasia has never been carried out? How about deliberately "pulling the plug" or even doing nothing in the presence of a DNR wish?

Eta: re: DNR: doing nothing while someone dies in front of you that you could almost certainly save is absolutely Doing Harm, if only by omission.
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No, you're losing the plot here. I'm saying physician-performed execution isn't a thing, that it contravenes medical ethics. Euthanasia is an entirely different situation, as I said above. That the latter can be acceptable in medical ethics does not mean the former is.
 
JoeMorgue said:
If society decides executing people is good for society (and again only talking in that context) then doctors handwringing over their oh so special "oath" means exactly as much as any other profession dealing with society wanting something.
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There's a difference between "society is doing a thing" and "I'm doing a thing". Individuals can only control their own individual actions: Dr Smith may not be able to stop the death penalty, he may even be in favor of it, but that doesn't mean he is going to be injecting the condemned himself.
 
Yes and "Doctors aren't allowed to do something because of an "oath"" takes away that volition.

The argument is whether or not doctors want to assist with executions or feel that executions aren't harmful they can't because of a "code." Not laws or policies or things like that. It's a quasi-religious thing almost.

A literal genie interpretation of "Well the quote from the long dead Greek guy is do no harm and I think this is harmful so case closed" isn't how society should work in 2024.

We have ethic laws and biomedical industry standards to determine the "right" behavior for doctors in a professional settings.

If tomorrow the Federal government declared that all passwords can only be 10 characters, no numbers or special characters, and could only be the name of your pet, first child, or favorite sports team IT professionals would almost generally not like it, but you and me wouldn't be having a serious discussion about excommunicating IT professionals who went along with it because they dared "Break the sacred IT Code."
 
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TragicMonkey said:
No, you're losing the plot here. I'm saying physician-performed execution isn't a thing, that it contravenes medical ethics. Euthanasia is an entirely different situation, as I said above. That the latter can be acceptable in medical ethics does not mean the former is.
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No, I'm staying on point. My argument is that Doing No Harm is slippery, and not a justification for not performing an execution. Physicians do harm in many ways, with full intent, not even getting into Doing Harm inadvertently. Whether they have colorful excuses for plug pulling is a separate matter.
 
Would a doctor be breaking the Hippocratic Oath if he killed someone in self defense?
 
Thermal said:
No, I'm staying on point. My argument is that Doing No Harm is slippery, and not a justification for not performing an execution. Physicians do harm in many ways, with full intent, not even getting into Doing Harm inadvertently. Whether they have colorful excuses for plug pulling is a separate matter.
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And my argument is that no, it's not "slippery" for healthcare, that the question has long since been settled in healthcare. Doctors will not perform executions. Doctors may or may not perform euthanasia. That you see similarity between the two doesn't mean they do. Believe it or not, everybody in life doesn't operate like an internet message board with "well, it can be argued..." and hypothetical situations so cliched they'd make Intro to Philosophy students blush. There is a huge body of work on medical ethics, healthcare professionals take it very seriously, and no you are not going to wrangle a doctor into becoming in an executioner by employing Cunning Internet JREF-Style Arguments to them. It's a serious profession with a surprising percentage of intelligent, reasonable people who actually care about doing good work and being good people.

Professional healthcare has its own practices (heh, pun). It does not have to take into account philosophical wrangling from outside healthcare. You can claim "it's the same as euthanasia" all you like but they don't have to entertain that any more than they have to entertain some religion telling them blood transfusions are wicked or that God insists that Harlequin baby (if you don't know what that is don't Google it) be born.
 
Thermal said:
No, I'm staying on point. My argument is that Doing No Harm is slippery, and not a justification for not performing an execution. Physicians do harm in many ways, with full intent, not even getting into Doing Harm inadvertently. Whether they have colorful excuses for plug pulling is a separate matter.
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Pathetic.
When my mother died last year with medical assistance she was helped, not harmed. Her death was inevitable and she was in pain. She was helped by not having to continue to suffer that pain. Making her to continue to suffer by doing nothing and not assisting her death as she legally requested would have been doing harm to her.
 
Steve said:
Pathetic.
When my mother died last year with medical assistance she was helped, not harmed. Her death was inevitable and she was in pain. She was helped by not having to continue to suffer that pain. Making her to continue to suffer by doing nothing and not assisting her death as she legally requested would have been doing harm to her.
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You're making my argument for me. I'm in favor of euthanasia. What I'm not in favor of is playing fast and loose with the Hipp Oath as a justification for not performing executions. That's what makes it colorful excuses, not the action itself, that I consider humane.
 
Thermal said:
The doc is not performing healthcare to a Death Row dude either.
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If the executioner is using his medical knowledge and skills acquired by going through medical school, getting a license, and practicing as a doctor then yes he would be.

Again, this is not an unexplored, unexamined, "but what if?" slippery slope argument for healthcare professionals. It's been settled for them.
 
TragicMonkey said:
If the executioner is using his medical knowledge and skills acquired by going through medical school, getting a license, and practicing as a doctor then yes he would be.

Again, this is not an unexplored, unexamined, "but what if?" slippery slope argument for healthcare professionals. It's been settled for them.
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I get that it's been settled for them. I'm questioning how sound their reasoning was, and feeling like it smells like a cop out. They are not the Lone Ranger on giving whack assed justifications for what they do/don't do, but I'll drop it.
 
Thermal said:
You're making my argument for me. I'm in favor of euthanasia. What I'm not in favor of is playing fast and loose with the Hipp Oath as a justification for not performing executions. That's what makes it colorful excuses, not the action itself, that I consider humane.
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The examples you, and you alone here, have used as the basis for your claim that doctors do intentionally cause harm are not valid arguments. Euthanasia at the request of the patient, medically necessary removal of limbs, and the like are not in any way harm by any logical understanding of the term. The end result is beneficial to the patient. And in that regard is about as much the opposite of an execution as it is possible to get.

I have no doubt that there are licensed doctors in the USA who would be quite content to perform executions. But none of them do. Because their licensing bodies have made a decision, based at least partly on the Hippocratic oath and the practical reasoning behind it, that doctors performing executions will lose their license to practice. That this policy appears to be universal across all US medical associations removed it far from any trite description of "colorful excuse". ETA following your statement that you are "questioning how sound their reasoning was" - it seems that all those medical bodies are in solid agreement that their reasoning is sound
 
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Can't you sidestep this whole Hippocratic oath stuff by simply putting up a poster at a med school that reads like this:


"Dropping out of Med school? Well we have a job for you! Join our specialist team where killing the patient is actually the goal!"
 
Daald said:
Can't you sidestep this whole Hippocratic oath stuff by simply putting up a poster at a med school that reads like this:


"Dropping out of Med school? Well we have a job for you! Join our specialist team where killing the patient is actually the goal!"
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You don't need even a med school dropout to insert an IV line and inject stuff into it. The problem is getting access to the stuff you need to inject to carry out a humane execution (especially, anesthetics) which can only be legally obtained or legally used by a licensed doctor.

And the Constitution rules out any attempt to force the issue ("since we can't get anesthetics we're just going to inject 50cc of whatever we can freely get access to, like unfiltered pond water or just air, and if you don't like the resulting suffering you could give us anesthetics to use instead").
 
Steve said:
The examples you, and you alone here, have used as the basis for your claim that doctors do intentionally cause harm are not valid arguments. Euthanasia at the request of the patient, medically necessary removal of limbs, and the like are not in any way harm by any logical understanding of the term. The end result is beneficial to the patient. And in that regard is about as much the opposite of an execution as it is possible to get.

I have no doubt that there are licensed doctors in the USA who would be quite content to perform executions. But none of them do. Because their licensing bodies have made a decision, based at least partly on the Hippocratic oath and the practical reasoning behind it, that doctors performing executions will lose their license to practice. That this policy appears to be universal across all US medical associations removed it far from any trite description of "colorful excuse". ETA following your statement that you are "questioning how sound their reasoning was" - it seems that all those medical bodies are in solid agreement that their reasoning is sound
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Ummm.. you guys actually know that physician assisted suicide is legal in parts of the United States (including my beloved NJ) and Canada, right?

Eta: and that helping a living person to die would be considered "doing harm" by many people?

And regarding that strange "you and you alone" making this argument, so what? I have no qualms about arguing an unpopular position, and the few posters in this discussion are not the sole arbitrators of righteousness.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
If society decides executing people is good for society (and again only talking in that context) then doctors handwringing over their oh so special "oath" means exactly as much as any other profession dealing with society wanting something.
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I hear what you're saying. I think this might be a bit more tricky. On the one hand, the state certainly shouldn't be able to force any doctor to take part in an execution, and I hope that you would agree. On the other hand, this isn't a case of individual doctors handwringing over their oath, it's a case of the professional body that licenses doctors taking an oppositional view of executions across the board.

I think there's a case to be made that such a blanket position by the professional oversight body is overreach, and extends beyond the scope of their authority... but that's a different argument than what you're putting forth here.

It's entirely possible that there are some doctors out there who are not personally opposed to executions - some might well be influenced by the argument that executions should be carried out in as humane a way as possible, and that the means used for euthanasia are the best ones to employ. But it's not up to those individuals, and if they take part in an execution, the AMA (or whatever) could revoke their license to practice medicine.

I wouldn't expect any doctor to give up their entire career and livelihood in order to perform the rare execution. So perhaps the government ought to have some discussions with the AMA (or whatever) regarding their position.
 
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