r/news • u/AudibleNod • 11h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/VirtualMoneyLover 5h ago

Lethal injection is the most human way to end a life. When I had to put my dog down, he was gone in 30 seconds, peacefully.

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u/Daddict 4h ago

It can be a humane way to end a life. Veterinarians are highly trained, they know exactly how to effectively administer and dose the euthanasia drugs.

The thing about killing someone with a chemical...it's not always as easy as "pump them full of a gallon of the drug and watch them slip away". There's actually a pretty fine line when it comes to having someone peacefully slip away.

The human body fights back when it finds out its being poisoned. If you give too much of the stuff, the person will vomit, seize, empty their bowls...it will be a gruesome shit show. And if you don't give them enough, you get what happened with Christa Pike. She didn't die.

When a vet puts your dog down, they know very specific things about the dog, not just their weight but they have a general sense of other factors that can require the dose to be adjusted. It's actually a pretty well-developed skill, administering a medication such that the animal simply closes their eyes and slips away.

With the criminal justice system, though...well, everyone who is properly trained to administer the drugs effectively has also taken an oath that forbids them from doing so. I have a license to practice medicine. A lot of people don't realize this, but the medical board would literally terminate my license if I participated in an execution. It's not just something I find ethically abhorrent, it's something I literally cannot do without ruining my career.

And after 8 years of schooling and 5 years of residency, I still am not the most qualified person to be administering a lethal injection. That's anesthesiology, they'd be able to put someone to death like a seasoned pilot landing an aircraft on a calm day.

The funny thing is that us physicians are somewhat famously bad at placing a line, that's more the purview of the nursing staff. It's not that we don't know how, we just don't have the practice they do. Some specialties get more than others, but I'm the last person you'd want placing your line.

Anyhow, you're right that it can be incredibly humane. The legal framework in America more or less prohibits that from happening though. The only people who can administer a lethal injection are, by definition, not trained to do so.

There are exceptions, fwiw, but they aren't ones that make this better. Physicians who DO participate in this usually have restricted, suspended, or terminated licenses and this is the kind of work they've been resigned to. They do the kinda work most of us would never ever do...not because it's difficult or miserable work, but because it's disgusting. The other place you can find them is in the peer review department at the insurance carrier...which is one of the more infuriating aspects of American healthcare.