Article of Interest: Cato Institute Fellow Critiques Medical Ethics Double Standard Around Executions

In a February blog post, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jeffrey A. Singer crit­i­cizes the use of med­ical­ized lethal injec­tion, high­light­ing the dou­ble stan­dard under which pro­ce­dures that med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are eth­i­cal­ly barred from car­ry­ing out are not only allowed, but required, of law enforce­ment per­son­nel. ​“A doc­tor who inten­tion­al­ly per­forms cru­el and med­ical­ly unjus­ti­fi­able pro­ce­dures that cause pain and suf­fer­ing could face crim­i­nal charges. If the patient dies, the doc­tor could face homi­cide charges,” Mr. Singer writes. ​“Apparently, those rules don’t apply to law enforcement.” 

He describes the ​“unnec­es­sary and avoid­able pain and suf­fer­ing” caused by botched lethal injec­tions in Arizona and under fed­er­al juris­dic­tion. He then explains that near­ly every pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion in the health­care field con­sid­ers it uneth­i­cal for its mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions. As a result, states have turned to ​“under­ground sources” of lethal injec­tion drugs and used prison staff, ​“many with no med­ical train­ing,” to perform executions. 

Mr. Singer con­cludes with a stark state­ment of the eth­i­cal quandary pre­sent­ed by lethal injec­tions: ​“Doctors who vio­late med­ical ethics face pros­e­cu­tion — when the state does it, they call it justice.” 

The CATO Institute seeks to ​“inject[] the lib­er­tar­i­an per­spec­tive into main­stream pol­i­cy debates in Washington, DC, and across the country.”