Physicians' attitudes about involvement in lethal injection for capital punishment

Background: Physicians could play various roles in carrying out capital pun ishment via lethal injection. Medical societies like the American Medical A ssociation (AMA) and American College of Physicians have established which roles are acceptable and which are disallowed. No one has explored physicia ns' attitudes toward their potential roles in this process. Methods: We surveyed physicians about how acceptable it was for physicians to engage in 8 actions disallowed by the AMA and 4 allowed actions involvin g lethal injection. Questions assessing attitudes toward capital punishment and assisted suicide were included. The impact of attitudinal and demograp hic variables on the number of disallowed actions deemed acceptable was ana lyzed via analysis of variance and multiple logistic regression analysis. Results: Four hundred eighty-two physicians (51%) returned questionnaires. Eighty percent indicated that at least 1 of the disallowed actions was acce ptable, 53% indicated that 5 or more were acceptable, and 34% approved all 8 disallowed actions. The percentage of respondents approving of disallowed actions varied from 43% for injecting lethal drugs to 74% for determining when death occurred. All 4 allowed actions were deemed acceptable by the ma jority of respondents. Favoring the death penalty (P<.001) and the acceptan ce of assisted suicide (P<.001) were associated with an increased number of disallowed actions that were deemed acceptable. Conclusions: Despite medical society policies, the majority of physicians s urveyed approved of most disallowed actions involving capital punishment, i ndicating that they believed it is acceptable in some circumstances for phy sicians to kill individuals against their wishes. It is possible that the l ack of stigmatization by colleagues allows physicians to engage in such pra ctices.