China makes capital punishment a breeze

Originally Posted by Fjordor

Enough with this "quote war," and getting more topical once again, am I then to understand that lethal injections, performed properly, should involve a separate anesthesia? Or is the sodium thiopental considered sufficient(supposed to render people unconscious)?.

I can't recall precisely how this subject originally came to my notice, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that a lot of the prisoners executed by this method are fully aware during their execution, as Kat said. It was covered pretty widely after the method was first introduced, and there have been several recurrences of that coverage.

Looking around for some bedtime reading for you produces this document, which is a reproduction of an article published in The Lancet. In case you're not familiar with that publication, it's a British peer-reviewed medical journal, and is one of the oldest publications of its kind.

http://www.atypicaljoe.com/archives/...InadAnesth.pdf

To add to what Kat wrote, my understanding is that execution by Lethal Injection is a three-stage process. The first step is to anaesthetise the patient with Sodium Thiapentothol. The next step, administration of Pancuronium Bromide, then induces paralysis of the muscles, including those responsible for breathing. Finally, the Potassium Chloride stops the electrical activity required for cardiac function.

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I'm not biologically inclined, but that information is readily avaialble, and not difficult to understand. What the article from The Lancet has to say is that, as Kat has stated, the dose of Sodium Thiapentothal often inadequate. The standard dosage for execution is based on a quantity sufficient to anaesthetise a 220lb (100kg) man for 10 minutes, under normal conditions. The average time from injection to death is 8.5 minutes, and those to be executed are usually frightened and hyper-adrenal, which makes them resistant to the anesthetic.

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That's all paraphrased from the article, and I can well imagine that having my heart and lungs forcibly stopped while I am awake would be somewhat painful. Consider the feeling when you choke on a piece of food. Now imagine that you never actually managed to clear your airway. I imagine it's many times worse than that.

There's nothing humane about lethal injections the way they are currently done. I think that even a condemned man doesn't deserve that. Cruel and Unusual Punishments are prohibited by the Constitution, are they not?

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