On the heels of yesertday’s oral argument in Baze v. Rees, the  New England Journal of Medicine has published an editorial, Physicians and Execution, by Gregory D. Curfman, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D. addressing where, from the physicians perspective, they should be in the mix.

After providing an interesting overview of how society progressed from hanging to electrocution, gas chamber and then lethal injection, to “sanitize” the process and thereby make the execution process more humane, the authors posit that lawyers, without physicians, will never be able to come up with a means of killing that will pass constitutional muster.

We are concerned that, regardless of its decision in Baze v. Rees, the Court may include language in its opinion that will turn again to the medical profession to legitimize a form of lethal injection that, meeting an appropriate constitutional standard, will not be considered “cruel and unusual punishment.” On the surface, lethal injection is a deceptively simple procedure, but its practical application has been fraught with numerous technical difficulties. Without the involvement of physicians and other medical professionals with special training in the use of anesthetic drugs and related agents, it is unlikely that lethal injection will ever meet a constitutional standard of decency. But do we as a society want the nation’s physicians to do this? We believe not.

This is a fascinating call to arms by physicians not to be sucked into the frey of capital punishment.  While doctors frequently enjoy playing hobby lawyers, essentially bailing us out of our medical ignorance by providing what purports to be the latest and greatest in scientific proof, the authors jump in to stop their brethren in their tracks.

We believe that . . . all responsible members of the medical profession, when asked to assist in a state-ordered execution, will remember the Hippocratic Oath and refuse to participate. The future of capital punishment in the United States will be up to the justices, but the involvement of physicians in executions will be up to the medical profession.

So are we really on our own, or will the brotherhood of physicians break ranks and give up the medical secret to constitutionally acceptable executions?