Nearly every association of medical professionals has officially declared it unethical for their members to take part in executions by lethal injection. There's just one holdout--the American Pharmacist Association. But one Indiana woman is hoping to change that. Kelsey Kauffman, a longtime progressive activist, has started a petition calling for the APhA to ban its members from taking part in executions in any way. She thinks it will eventually lead to the end of the death penalty in the United States altogether. Sign here.
“I was reading an article last July about an execution that was postponed in Georgia because the Department of Corrections wouldn’t give any information to the lawyers or the judges about what execution drugs were going to be used and where they had gotten them from. The article mentioned that pharmacists, unlike other medical professionals, are not banned from participating in executions. And I remember thinking — wow, that’s surprising,” Kauffman recounted in an interview with ThinkProgress. “I happen to be opposed to the death penalty. But I’m especially opposed to the medicalization of the death penalty.”
Almost all major medical associations — the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and the American Nurses Association — prohibit their members from assisting in executions. These professional associations believe that taking another person’s life against their will is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, and can’t be reconciled with health workers’ ethical obligation to care for their patients. There can be stiff penalties for violating that. The American Board of Anesthesiology, which updated its policy in this area just four years ago, stipulates that members who participate in executions will lose their medical certification.
But, while the American Pharmacist Association (APhA) has a similar code of ethics, the issue of executions isn’t specifically mentioned.
Kauffman was spurred to action when Ohio put Dennis McGuire to death in January. McGuire was convicted for brutally raping a pregnant woman before stabbing her to death. However, Ohio punished McGuire's act of barbarism with a barbaric act of its own. It executed him with a cocktail that essentially suffocated him for 25 minutes. Ohio was forced to turn to this combination because the manufacturer of the previous one refused to let it be used for executions anymore. This comes on the heels of several European countries and the European Commission placing crippling restrictions on the export of drugs used for executions. So Ohio was forced to turn to a drug cocktail that had never been used for executions anywhere in this country before--despite being
warned that it would suffocate McGuire alive.
In the face of overwhelming international consensus that the death penalty is inherently inhumane, several states are turning to compounding pharmacies to make the execution cocktails. That's problematic on two counts. Not only can we not be sure that compounded drugs are safe (see New England Compounding Center) but a lot of states are increasingly tight-lipped about where these compounded drugs are made, citing fear of public pressure (gee, ya think?). Kauffman thinks that if the APhA changes its policy to ban pharmacists from assisting in executions, the employees at compounding pharmacies won't be able to keep supplying those drugs. Most major American human rights organizations--including Amnesty International and the ACLU--have signed a letter to the APhA supporting the petition, and several senior members of the association are very receptive to such a change.
Given that the supply pipelines from both inside and outside this country have almost dried up, if lethal injections are effectively ended, states will have to turn to other execution methods--few of which are at all acceptable today. For instance, when Missouri attorney general Chris Koster asked for money to build a gas chamber, Governor Jay Nixon--a strong supporter of the death penalty--said in no uncertain terms that a gas chamber will never be built as long as he's governor. Kauffman thinks that if lethal injection is taken off the table, so few states will be willing to do executions in any form at all that at some point, the courts will eventually decide that the death penalty is no longer acceptable. We can only hope--but it's worth trying to ensure the first step is taken. Sign here.