Atul Gawande, surgeon, professor of surgery at Harvard and public health researcher, explores his view on the death penalty and the research that shook his views. Gawande’s personal view on the death penalty has been transformed by the research conducted for his story “Doctors of the Death Chamber”. In this story doctors and nurses give personal accounts of their controversial roles in prison executions. Gawande’s story about capital punishment raises the question: “Is medicine being used as an instrument of death?”
Prior to 1982 the United States carried out executions through hanging, gas chambers, firing squads, and electrocution. These methods were grisly and inhumane. Prisoners sometimes took up to twenty minutes to die. Some had to be electrocuted several times while screaming in agony. In 1977 Dr. Deutsch created a method of execution involving several different kinds of drugs to humanely induce death. Officials liked this method of execution as it medicalized the process and was easier to witness.
Gawande makes the claim: “To have the state take control of these skills for its purposes against a human being— for punishment— seems a dangerous perversion” (116). On February 14, 2006, a United States district court issued an unprecedented ruling in the execution of murderer Michael Morales. In order to uphold the Constitutions Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment California was ordered to have a physician, specifically an anesthesiologist, personally supervise the execution by lethal injection to determine the prisoner’s state of consciousness (p101). The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) strongly opposed this ruling stating that “Physicians are healers not executioners” (p102). This ruling according to the AMA and ASA violated the medical code of ethics. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then tried to add a stipulation requiring additional medication to be given if the prisoner was not unconscious or was in pain but, was rejected by the AMA and ASA. After this added stipulation was rejected the “federal courts have since continued to require that medical professionals assist with the administration of any execution by lethal injection” (102). Dr. B is 40yrs old, and a family practice doctor. He is not opposed to capital punishment. He participated in over 30 executions and was troubled by them. He kept his involvement as secret as possible. He looked up AMA Code of Ethic guidelines and he was reassured that he was in compliance. He kept strict to the code and refused to give medical advice or aid in the actual execution. DR. B’s opinion is lethal injection is not cruel, it’s mostly peaceful. Doctors and nurses are need to ensure it is done properly and humanely as possible.
Gawande seems to have two views on capital punishment. In the beginning he says that he is in favor of the death penalty. He worked to support Clinton’s support of capital punishment during the presidential campaign. Gawande feels the punishment should fit the crime. “I believe there are some human beings who do such evil as to deserve to die” (Gawande 116). These opinions were before he interviewed the doctors and nurses who were directly involved with executions. I find it interesting that when he thinks about the death penalty in the abstract he is fine, but when he hears the gory details he is disturbed about it. I wonder how many people who are for the death penalty would still support it after witnessing an execution. Like Gawande, it could be that you are forever changed in your views of execution. He says, “if it turns out that executions cannot then be performed without, as the courts put it, “unconstitutional pain and cruelty,” the death penalty should be abolished” (Gawande 119).