BMJ  2007;335:690 (6 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.39356.609792.DB

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Doctors who help give lethal injections should be punished, says Amnesty

Caroline White

London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Doctors and other healthcare staff who take any part in executions by lethal injection should be punished by their professional bodies, says the human rights organisation, Amnesty International.

In a report published to mark 25 years of the use of this method of execution, Amnesty says that leading professional organisations should push harder to outlaw the practice. The organisation opposes any form of capital punishment.

The practice is condoned in only six countries. But despite an overall fall in the numbers of lethal injections in four of these, it has become the execution method of choice in the United States, says the report.

There have been 919 such executions in the US since the method became legal in 1977 to the end of July this year. More prisoners are executed in China than anywhere else in the world, and the country increasingly views lethal injection as a more modern approach . . . [Full text of this article]


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