Capital punishment

[mtbc]

Means of capital punishment are back in the news. While I do like a lot about the US and life is not as sacred to me as it is to some, I am strongly against the death sentence. Still, even if limiting to methods that leave the corpse looking good for the funeral, it intrigues me that they have such difficulty actually effecting it. We routinely render people unconscious for surgery and, once under, one would imagine that a large dose of anything from a barbiturate to an opiate might quietly and quickly do for anyone. I can't help but wonder if the impediments are rather more ethical or political than technical or physical: that if we put our mind to it we certainly can kill criminals off humanely but that everybody from the drug-makers to competent implementors of the protocols do not want to touch any part of the business even with a very long bargepole.