Ethics

Doctors in Executions – Ethical Viewpoints

As a physician, a person has to choose between his/her duties - the job you are commanded to do or his moral and what it is the right thing to do. Although, as we all know doctors are supposed to help to preserved life not otherwise. I asked one of my family members who is a physician back home – which is Honduras, and where the death penalty is not allowed – what does he think about doctors’ involvement in these situations, and which he responded “ In my personal opinion I believe that physicians should not be thought in this situation because we are who we are now to our love for medicine because it brings hope and preserves lives, not because we want to be able to punish or wrong do someone with our skills, which are supposed to be used for good, and even though perhaps you are taking the life of someone who took the life of an innocent does not mean you get to choose what happens to that persons’ life”. And I totally agree with him, I think that if people who agree with the death penalty and it are involved in the process should find a way in which doctors are not involved in this situation. Our modern criminal system has preserved the death penalty but without the conventional inhuman methods of executions. While Europe and a few other countries have banned the death penalty, the US continues its tryst with this ancient form of punishment. However, the US has prescribed death through lethal injection as the means of humane execution. The law in at least 35 of these states requires that such executions depute a doctor for the whole process. (Black & Sade 27). This essay will seek to use and apply the concepts of a few philosophers and corresponding schools of thought to arrive at a view. The collective view will then be used to argue the principal requirement of this essay. This essay will discuss on the ethical consideration of why a physician should not take part in such a legal and state authorized executions....