RESEARCH ARTICLE
Lethal Injection, Anesthesia, Medicine and Organ Donation - Ethical and Clinical Considerations Regarding the Pending Supreme Court Case: Baze vs Rees
Paul M. Kempen*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 7
Last Page: 12
Publisher ID: TOATJ-2-7
DOI: 10.2174/1874321800802010007
Article History:
Received Date: 12/01/2008Revision Received Date: 25/03/2008
Acceptance Date: 31/03/2008
Electronic publication date: 21/4/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The recent deliberation by the United States Supreme Court regarding the use of lethal injection for executions has raised public awareness regarding the technique itself and any similarity with clinical anesthesia. This paper reviews the issues, with an emphasis in utilizing lay terms, to provide information and reference to professionals and lay persons interested in the subject of lethal injection. Anesthesiologists are most knowledgeable of the specific drugs involved in the process and may be called upon to provide information in this matter.