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Doctors' Role at Executions Debated: Medical Board Takes Up Issue

Posted on: Thursday, 18 May 2006, 09:09 CDT

By Andrea Weigl, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

May 18--RALEIGH -- The N.C. Medical Board took the first step Wednesday toward deciding whether physicians who participate in executions are violating their professional ethics.

The board, which disciplines doctors, has never received a complaint about a doctor being involved in the execution of a killer. But recent publicity about doctors' involvement in North Carolina's executions prompted Wednesday's action. The board's executive committee referred the matter to its policy committee, which will meet July 19 in Raleigh.

The policy committee will likely discuss the topic and present options for the full board to consider later in the year.

State law requires a physician to be present at executions. In the course of litigation about the state's method of lethal injection, prison officials also have revealed that a doctor and nurse stand in a room adjacent to the execution chamber where a heart monitor and a brain wave monitor are located. Monitoring vital signs and brain-wave activity violates doctors' ethics code, according to the American Medical Association, which opposes doctors' involvement in executions.

Those recent revelations prompted half a dozen North Carolina doctors to write to the board urging it to take a position against being involved in executions.

"We've taken an oath to preserve life and act in the best interest of the patient," said one letter writer, Charles van der Horst, a professor at UNC's School of Medicine. "This is not acting in the best interest of the patient. This is acting as an instrument of state government."

Van der Horst said he was encouraged by board's action, adding, "If a doctor is violating their oath, they need to be hauled before the board and have their license taken away."

(Dr. van der Horst's brother, Roger, is an editor at The News & Observer who oversees education coverage.)

Robert Bilbro, a Raleigh physician who wrote to the board, said, "I'm glad they are going to look into it further." Bilbro co-authored a letter with Dr. Liz Kanof, a former medical board member and former president of the N.C. Medical Society.

The medical board's action is unusual compared with the reaction in other states where the issue has been raised, said Dr. Jonathan Groner, an Ohio State surgeon who follows the issue and opposes doctors being involved in executions.

In California, opposing bills have been proposed in the legislature -- one protecting doctors who participate and another preventing doctors from taking part. In Georgia, legislation was proposed that would prevent that state's medical board from disciplining doctors who participate in executions.

"This is the first case that I've heard of a medical board taking up physician participation in executions as an ethical issue," Groner said. "The fact that the medical board is willing to look at this issue is outstanding from my point of view."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

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Source: The News & Observer

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