GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: If you cannot remember a crime, should you be executed for it?

domingo, 7 de octubre de 2018

BioEdge: If you cannot remember a crime, should you be executed for it?

BioEdge: If you cannot remember a crime, should you be executed for it?

Bioedge

If you cannot remember a crime, should you be executed for it?

by Michael Cook | 6 Oct 2018 |

On April 18, 1985 Vernon Madison shot an Alabama police office in the back of the head at point blank range. He was tried three times for the crime and sentenced to death in 1994. He has been living on death row ever since. He is now 68 years old.

There is no doubt that he committed the crime. But his defence lawyers contend that after suffering two strokes in 2015 and 2016 he cannot remember it. Should he be executed?

His case has come before the US Supreme Court.

The Alabama Attorney General's office questions whether his amnesia is genuine and argues that Madison’s execution “will serve as an example to others that the intentional murder of a police officer will be punished”. It also contends that a prisoner with amnesia “is no less subject to deterrence than an inmate who remembers the crime that put him in prison.”

“A failure to recall committing a crime is distinct from a failure to understand why one is being punished for a crime. An inmate’s personal recollection of the crime is irrelevant to whether the inmate shares the community’s understanding of the crime, has a moral responsibility for committing the crime, or understands why he is being punished for the crime.”

The Equal Justice Initiative, which is defending Madison, says that his health puts him “into the category of prisoners for whom an execution would serve no retributive or deterrent purpose.” They claim that the strokes have left Madison blind, with “vascular dementia, cognitive deficits, severe memory loss, and brain damage.” He has difficulty moving and speaking.

“He frequently urinates on himself and complains that no one will let him out to use the bathroom when there is a toilet inches away from his bed,” EJI wrote in a brief for the court. “His memory is so impaired that he can no longer recite the alphabet or do a simple math problem. He is unable to remember that his mother and brother are deceased and cannot identify the prison warden or officers who have been guarding him for years.”

Sunday, October 7, 2018

About five minutes before I was about to entrust this newsletter to MailChimp, I heard that the Canadian Medical Association had just withdrawn from the World Medical Association after the WMA's annual meeting in Reykjavík.

The CMA said that the trigger for this dramatic turn of events was the highly unethical behaviour of the incoming president of the WMA, Dr Leonid Eidelman. It accused Dr Eidelman of plagiarism. This was true and not very smart. A few sentences in Dr Eidelman’s inaugural address to the assembly had been lifted from the inaugural address of a former president of the CMA, Dr Chris Simpson. Since Dr Simpson was one of the CMA’s delegates in Reykjavík, it was highly unlikely that this would go unnoticed. Apparently other passages had also been copied from “various websites, blogs and news articles, without appropriate attribution to the authors”.

"As an organization that holds itself as the arbiter of medical ethics at the global level, the WMA has failed to uphold its own standards,” said Dr Gigi Osler, the current CMA president. “The CMA cannot, in all good conscience, continue to be a member of such an organization.”

The WMA Council and the Assembly accepted an apology from Dr Eidelman. He said that he had relied upon speechwriters – a plausible excuse, as he is a Latvian who emigrated to Israel and who speaks English with a heavy accent.

This is not the first time that a WMA president has been accused of moral failings. The immediate past president, Dr Ketan Desai, was elected while facing criminal charges for corruption in India. At the time, medical ethicist Art Caplan urged the WMA to ditch him as morally compromised. It didn’t.

So the Canadians’ reaction seems disproportionate. It is more likely that it was prompted by the WMA’s firm opposition to euthanasia, which the CMA vigorously supports. One of the CMA delegates, Dr Jeff Blackmer, posted a bitter tweet about the irony that an unethical plagiarist had once openly criticised him for being unethical in backing euthanasia.

No doubt euthanasia will continue to split the medical profession. Any comments from readers?