Dr Joel Zivot, Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology and Surgery at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, warns that his research on drugs used in lethal injections showed that they led to a “very painful death” and that assisted suicide is “neither painless nor dignified” as activists once again push to legalise the practice.
Writing in The Spectator, Dr Zivot referred to an execution he had witnessed where the barbiturates used caused a pulmonary oedema, meaning the man had “drowned in his secretions” – a death that was neither painless nor dignified
He said that at the time “even my medical eye detected no sign of distress”, but his suspicions were confirmed following autopsies on a number of inmates executed by lethal injection.
The senior medic warned that the proposals in the Bill to be debated in the House of Lords on October 22nd “would see sick patients prescribed a lethal dose of perhaps 100 barbiturate pills”, and like Oregon would “require patients to take the drugs themselves, which rules out any form of general anaesthetic”. he added that: “many will be in great discomfort, even if outwardly they don’t appear to be suffering”.
Writing in The Times, Danny Kruger MP, who co chairs the All Party Group Dying Well with Professor Baroness (Ilora) Finlay on said accounts such as Zivot’s made for “harrowing reading” and stressed that palliative care means “no one needs to die in physical agony”.
The MP added how activist group Dignity in Dying (formerly known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) “points to Oregon as the example for the UK to follow. They never mention Canada, Belgium or the Netherlands, with good reason.
“There the state is routinely killing the frail, depressed and disabled. Even in Oregon, the business of death by appointment is horrible.”
Mr. Kruger concluded: “Rather than licensing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to people at the most vulnerable stage of their lives, our focus should be on ensuring that every dying person has the best possible care at the end.”
