A state-sponsored killing cannot be condoned under any circumstances. It is as barbaric and brutal as the one that an individual or a group of people may have committed. It is in this context that some U.S. doctors' willingness to help execute those prisoners condemned to die by giving them a lethal injection appears so reprehensible. The journal Annals of Internal Medicine recently found that one-fifth of the physicians and surgeons it questioned ready to play "hangmen."
Although the American Medical Association, the largest and the most influential of its ilk in the country, strictly prohibits its members from giving the fatal jab, what seems highly regrettable is that such a thing ought to be happening in the United States, which takes pride in calling itself the guardian and crusader of human rights. By continuing to use the death penalty, America looks as medieval as China and Saudi Arabia.
Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia used capital punishment 123 times last year, and China almost 100 times more than that!