Re: "Why It's OK for Doctors to Participate in Executions"

4/22/17

To the editor:

 It is only with twisted logic that Sandeep Jauhar (4/21/17, Why It’s OK for Doctors to Participate in Executions) can argue that physicians have a rightful role in participating in the executions of convicts sentenced to death.

 It is absurd to equate the suffering of a terminally ill patient with a death-row inmate. The former is being destroyed from within; the latter by the state. Alleviating the suffering of a dying patient by offering end of life care is not the same as choosing to be a tool of the state. Such complicity not only violates the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm; it masks the barbarity and inhumanity of taking a life.

 A physician’s refusal to partake in enforcing capital punishment creates a necessary impediment to its implementation. Dr. Jauhar opines that more crude means of execution – like death by firing squad – may gain in popularity. If so, perhaps that will lead more Americans to ask why we are the only Western country to use the death penalty.

Respectfully submitted,

 Larry S. Sandberg MD