'Astonishingly cruel': Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row 'guinea pig'
‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’
Rodents might not be a great model. We know from a variety of sources that humans can't really sense excess nitrogen or hypoxic air: industrial accidents, diving experiments, even astronauts.
However, rodents may be able to sense hypoxia a bit better than we do: experiments found that rodents presented a choice would avoid a hypoxic chamber. Guinea pigs may not be the humane animal model here.
A hypoxic chamber does sound like one of the less painful ways to go. I'm not in favor of governments killing people, but a relatively quick loss of consciousness seems far better than getting poked with needles, electrocuted in the brain, shot with bullets, or hanged on a rope. Although I'm still expecting Alabama to screw this up somehow.
It's not a literal guinea pig. The human is the guinea pig
The article mentioned that veterinarians don't consider nitrogen to be humane for euthanizing animals.
If I was going to be executed I would volunteer for the nitrogen method over anything that's currently in use.
When the electric chair was introduced it was marketed as painless too.
Granted, we do have survivor accounts of nitrogen hypoxia so it's a bit different.
I think death by excessive explosion actually sounds both dope and as humane as it gets.
Like, strap a dude with way too much TNT and let it rip. They're guaranteed to not feel it, and explosives are relatively cheap.
Plus, the witnesses get to be issued ponchos, and that's always fun.
Bonus, you could probably raise funds for the district by having a thing where people could make a donation to have them add even more TNT. It's not like its going to make it any less or more fatal, but everyone likes an earth-shattering kaboom.
Not even joking, look at people sponsoring signed missiles in Ukraine and you know there are guys who would be all in on this
I don't care how it's marketed. I thought of nitrogen asphyxiation on my own a long time ago when I was contemplating the most reliable way to kill someone painlessly. (I am against the death penalty BTW, but I have no illusions about it stopping anytime soon.)
What makes nitrogen so much worse then the lethal injection or the chair or something?
I'm not so much concerned that it's 'worse', as that people will say it's 'better', as in, "Ain't it swell that we've figured out a kind and courteous way to execute people, so why not use it more often?"
Nitrogen has been approved as an execution method by three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
If something is banned everywhere except those specific states, there's a 100% likelihood that it's so heinous that it should never be allowed anywhere under any circumstances.
Euthanasia advocates are generally a compassionate bunch, and nitrogen asphyxiation has been proposed numerous times in that space. I don't think it's fair to vilify its usage just because you look down upon the states that have legalized it's usage in this capacity.
I've also personally blacked out from a lack of oxygen, and I can tell you it was far too sudden for me to comprehend I was about to die, let alone process potential pain.
I am against capital punishment, but if we're going to do it, the current methods are far too brutal. We need to be accepting of new alternatives, especially ones that historically have been effective in other contexts.
nitrogen asphyxiation has been proposed numerous times in that space
And never approved, for clearly stated reasons.
I don't think it's fair to vilify its usage just because you look down upon the states that have legalized it's usage
It's not that my reason for opposing state-sanctioned torture murder is that I don't like those states. While I'm sure there are some positive aspects of two of those states, there's no one thing that those three have in common with ONLY each other that isn't awful.
It's like how Orban and Mohdi are both amongst the worst tyrants in the world, but they agree on very little. That loving Putin is one of the few things they both do is very fitting. Likewise with these three states and nitrogen torture murder.
In this case, that's a distinction without consequence. It's the exact same thing with the direction reversed.
Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably the gentlest and most comfortable method of executing someone I can think of.
There's a funny quirk of human physiology: we don't have a mechanism for feeling hungry for oxygen. The desperate and painful sensation of needing to breathe fresh air? That's your need to expel CO2. Cinching a Hefty bag (not sponsored) around your neck is a miserable experience because you're poisoning yourself with your own carbon dioxide. Let the bag leak around your neck, and inflate it with a constant supply of inert gas - like helium, or argon, or nitrogen - and you won't notice yourself dying. I recommend helium; it'll make your last words that much more hilarious.
Reason I know this: I'm a flight instructor; you want to go somewhere where there's not enough oxygen? Get in a plane and go about 30,000 feet straight up. You don't feel that panicky "I can't breathe" sensation up there because you can freely exhale CO2, but there's not enough oxygen to keep your body working for long.
It is my understanding that among the states that still practice the death penalty, the methods that the law authorizes are lethal injection, electric chair, cyanide gas, hanging and firing squad, and the last two are technicalities that haven't been repealed yet. Compared to these methods, inert gas hypoxia is a lot more comfy. The electric chair and cyanide gas are proper horrifying, lethal injection is supposed to be humane on the theory that they anesthetize you before chemically stopping your heart...except no actual anesthesiologist wants anything to do with it, so they get some random guy to do it and they pretty much always botch it. It's not hard to flood a room with nitrogen, though.
The cruelty in this subject is found in these particular states executing people often enough to worry about it.
Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably the gentlest and most comfortable method of executing someone I can think of.
You must not be very imaginative, then. Look to Dignitas, the Swiss nonprofit organization providing physician-assisted suicide. If oxygen deprivation was really the gentlest and most comfortable method of ending a human life, don't you think that's what they would do?
Putting aside for a moment the fact that killing someone on purpose against their will is and always will be murder regardless of whether it's the government doing it, these three states don't want to use nitrogen because it's a gentle method. Everyone with actual medical expertise asked about it say it probably isn't.
They want to use nitrogen because it's cheap and because it's plentiful enough that people of better morals and ethics than themselves can't keep them from getting it. Those are the actual reasons no matter their pseudoscientific claims backed up by no evidence.
I would imagine any halfway honest judge would shut this down as cruel and unusual punishment. A judge like that might be a rarity in Alabama though.
I don't understand why we still need all these experiments to kill "humanely".
Because apparently it's fine to them like shit when they're alive?
Just slice their neck you psychopath. No matter what neat little bow you want to wrap this with, it's still just killing them. Cops do it all the time so what's the difference? Let a cop take them for target practice so they can get their bloodlust off.
Have they ever tried, like, not killing people, like all the civilized countries do?
Well that just sounds like a slippery slope straight to COMMUNISM /s