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The
Verge
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Capital punishment is so hard and
yet euthanasia is so easy? It is absurd to argue that capital punishment
involves inevitable physical suffering when this is not a significant issue in
the euthanasia debate. Despite the shortage of traditional execution drugs, it
is medically very easy to painlessly kill someone using drugs that remain
widely available. Taking more than 70 minutes to die while gasping and snorting
is in itself not an indication of physical distress. People with sleep apnoea
for example, will do this for the whole night and not feel a thing (rather than
feeling too much because they gasp and snort, they actually gasp and snort
because they are feeling too little). Rather than being distracted by medically
dubious technical issues, the capital punishment debate should focus on ethics.
