Capital punishment opponents want medical boards to punish these physicians, but a new study finds that boards do not have the legal power to intervene.
No U.S. medical board has disciplined a doctor for taking part in an execution, and that is unlikely to change, according to a new legal study.
The study, published in January in the Federation of State Medical Boards' Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline, is believed to be the first to comprehensively review all state laws and regulations on doctors, medical boards and executions. The study found that only seven death-penalty states incorporate the American Medical Association's ethics code, which, among other things, bars physician participation in executions.
Nearly all capital punishment states specifically call for doctors to be involved in some way, the study said.
"There is this perception that many people, including judges, have that because of the AMA ethical code, doctors can't participate and won't participate in executions when the reality -- and we've learned this through the legal cases that have been brought -- is that doctors do participate and are willing to participate," said Ty Alper, who authored the study and is associate director of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law's Death Penalty Clinic. "The AMA guidelines are just that -- guidelines -- and not enforceable in most circumstances."
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Source:
American Medical News, Feb. 22, 2010
