March 28, 2024

Go gentle?

The drugs used for executing American prisoners and the drugs used for assisting suicide are more or less the same. Do they guarantee that patients will, as in Keats' poem, “cease upon the midnight with no pain”. 

Um, no, or at least no guarantees. Just as some prisoners are tormented in botched executions, some patients in the state of Oregon have taken the lethal drug, gone unconscious, and awakened — sometimes days later. Read all about it in our lead article. 

Michael Cook
Modern medicine is great, but it cannot guarantee a quick and easy death
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assisted suicide