Taking the issue of these "botched", lethal injection, executions at face value, it's rather amazing to me that most of the very drugs used are the ones we in anesthesia administer every day in precise dosages and ways to bring patients through their surgery and anesthesia as smoothly as possible.
These drugs are our tools and we know them intimately. Obviously no health care provider is going to volunteer or otherwise be involved with lethal injection executions but picking my choice of drugs and dosages, death would be swift in 5-10 minutes, without pain, any contorted movements, or any degree of consciousness.
I don't understand why these prison officials can't procure this information and get it right. It takes knowledge and skill to use these drugs eloquently in delivering a good anesthetic; conversely, to execute quickly, it 1). takes the right drugs, 2). The right doses which = 3) quick painless death. It's the simplest of recipes that anybody who can read can follow.
So, rhetorically, why does this incompetency keep occurring?
As a physician I've made this same argument numerous times.
A few observations:
I believe the Hippocratic Oath binds most of us on this issue, although I'm not against capital punishment.
I'm sure they could find an abortion doc to participate in administering the cocktail of death.
Why not go back to firing squads with random blanks and multiple shooters?
Life in prison is an upgrade to their free lives for some heinous murderers so it needn't be an option.
