We live in a topsy-turvy world. On one hand, advocates of abortion and assisted suicide have shattered the Hippocratic Oath so that doctors can be free to take human life and still be considered professionals.
At the same time that they support medicalized killing in these contexts, they want to prevent doctors from any cooperation with the death penalty for vicious murderers, a matter about which the Oath is silent.
Now, death penalty opponents–many of whom support euthanasia and abortion–want to force drug companies to adopt a Hippocratic “do no harm” approach to the death penalty by coercing persuading them not to let their drugs to be used in executions. This approach has been pioneered by Amnesty International’s Reprieve Project. From an article over at The Conscience Project:
Reprieve has been especially successful in convincing pharmaceutical companies to prevent the use of their products in executions. A number of them have signed Reprieve’s Pharmaceutical Hippocratic Oath:
We dedicate our work to developing and distributing pharmaceuticals to the service of humanity; we will practice our profession with conscience and dignity; the right to health of the patient will be our first consideration; we condemn the use of any of our pharmaceuticals in the execution of human beings.
Reprieve describes the traditional Hippocratic Oath as the “bedrock of western medicine” that should apply to drug manufacturers as well as physicians. Maya Foa, a Reprieve specialist in lethal injection, told Time that Reprieve is not attempting to stop capital punishment in the United States, but to convince pharmaceutical companies to abide by the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.”
What a load of sewage. Drug companies are not medical doctors, and different standards apply.
That point aside, if these companies are expected to prevent their drugs from being used in executions, they should also prevent their products from being death agent that kills cancer patients in euthanasia or fetuses in drug-induced abortions.
Can you imagine Amnesty International types creating demands over procedures actually covered in the Hippocratic Oath? Neither can I.
On the positive side, these anti DP activities have led to a shortage of assisted suicide drugs, since the same drugs are used to kill in both actions. Cruel and unusual death with dignity.
HT: Alfonso Tabaoda Port from a Twitter conversation.