Dr. Philip B. Woodhall, M.D., who prac­ticed emer­gency med­i­cine in North Carolina for many years, recent­ly wrote about the pro­posed role of doc­tors in car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions. He stat­ed that med­i­cine and exe­cu­tions do not mix. “[D]octors are giv­en extra­or­di­nary rights and priv­i­leges,” he wrote, and ​“these pow­ers are ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion of human life, not to the ser­vice of death.” Woodhall urged North Carolina’s Department of Corrections to aban­don efforts to include doc­tors in any aspect of exe­cu­tions. He fur­ther com­ment­ed:

When I think about exe­cu­tions in North Carolina, I think about advice I gave my teenage daugh­ters: Nothing good hap­pens after mid­night. Our state exe­cutes pris­on­ers at 2 a.m. on Fridays; we choose the same hour as folks who have some­thing to hide. What remains in plain view is the fright­ful impli­ca­tion of con­vert­ing exe­cu­tion to a med­ical pro­ce­dure.
…

Since 1980 the American Medical Association has had poli­cies in place to dis­cour­age doc­tors from par­tic­i­pat­ing in exe­cu­tions. Since 1992 the Code of Medical Ethics, Article 2.06, has specif­i­cal­ly for­bid­den any par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions, with the excep­tion of pre­scrib­ing seda­tion before­hand and lat­er sign­ing the death cer­tifi­cate. The N.C. Medical Board has for­mal­ized a nation­al pro­fes­sion­al stan­dard that is 15 years old.
…

On April 11, a Department of Corrections offi­cial called Aspect Medical Systems in Massachusetts to rush-pur­chase a spe­cial brain­wave mon­i­tor. The writ­ten pur­chase order request from North Carolina stat­ed, ​“This equip­ment is used to mon­i­tor vital signs and seda­tion scales of patients recov­er­ing from surgery.” The machine is a tech­ni­cal but imper­fect aid to assure that a sedat­ed per­son is uncon­scious. Armed with this new mon­i­tor, the state received court per­mis­sion to exe­cute [Willie] Brown on April 21, 2006.

Aspect, appalled at this non­med­ical use of its equip­ment, now requires pur­chasers to sign a state­ment declar­ing that the equip­ment will not be used as part of a lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion. As report­ed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Department of Correction refused to com­ment on this inci­dent.

Such behav­ior by our gov­ern­ment buoys the moral and prac­ti­cal argu­ments against the death penal­ty. Whether an indi­vid­ual physi­cian sup­ports or decries exe­cu­tion, the Medical Board is right to use its pow­er to pre­vent all physi­cians from par­tic­i­pat­ing.

Doctors are grant­ed extra­or­di­nary rights and priv­i­leges, such as surgery — which might oth­er­wise be con­sid­ered assault — or the pre­scrib­ing of poten­tial­ly lethal and addic­tive med­i­cines. These pow­ers are ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion of human life, not to the ser­vice of death.
…

There is a good way to pre­vent this night­mare from recur­ring. Wake up. The whole world is watch­ing.

(North Carolina News & Observer, March 13, 2007). See New Voices and Lethal Injection.

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