Sawbones: Lethal Injection

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun.

Can't you just have fun for an hour, and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

One, two, one, two, three, four.

Justin McElroy (1:05)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I am your co-host, Justin McElroy.

Sydnee McElroy (1:10)

And I'm Sydnee McElroy.

Justin McElroy (1:11)

Howdy.

Sydnee McElroy (1:12)

Hey, Justin.

Bit of a serious tone this week. I wanted to say that before you made a joke and then had to feel bad about it. Sometimes I don't give you that sort of heads up.

Justin McElroy (1:23)

Yes, that's absolutely tip top of you. Sydnee, absolutely capital of you, I should say.

Sydnee McElroy (1:28)

Very kind. Oh, no.

Justin McElroy (1:30)

What are we talking about?

Sydnee McElroy (1:31)

Capital punishment.

Justin McElroy (1:32)

Yeah, see, you did it. I still did it and you tried to, dang it, dang it.

Sydnee McElroy (1:39)

Well, I got thinking about, so probably everyone is aware at this point. When you're listening to this episode, I will say this just happened in the news.

The situation may have changed by the time you're listening to this episode. I'm giving you this update as of Friday, October 2nd. When you listen to it, it might be different. But the state of Tennessee attempted to execute a woman named Krista Pike on Wednesday evening and failed in that attempt. And I was hearing these reports the next morning, and I became interested in the idea of this was a medical procedure in a sense that was done. And it went poorly in the way that we don't usually consider our procedures going poorly. I mean, when we do procedures, doctors in medicine, the patient surviving is good.

But from the state's perspective, it's actually bad. Yes. They consider this the unwanted outcome. And I started to think, you know, actually I put my mind in the place of the physician who received her as their patient to care for in the hospital, because I believe that she was transported to a hospital after the botched execution attempt. And I started thinking about just the ethical, what must that feel like to have the state deliver to you a human that they attempted to kill and failed and say, now fix them, we think. I don't know.

Justin McElroy (3:14)

It's all very, you know, it reminds me kind of like Catch-22 or Dr. Strangelove, one of those other, like it is obviously so dark and so grim, but also sort of like so bizarre, you know what I mean? It's really strange. So I hope it doesn't feel like we're making light of the topic, obviously. It's just such a strange, it's almost hard to kind of wrap your mind around, especially Doctor participating.

Sydnee McElroy (3:39)

Yes. And Doctor's involvement in how we execute humans has been a consistent theme throughout history. So I wanted to talk about that. Obviously, we are talking about death. We're talking about the intentional killing of humans by the state throughout history. So I just want to say that immediately. If this is not something you're in a head space to hear right now, I'm going to be talking about the different methods we have used, how have we arrived at this today, and why does it seem like we can't do this? When I say right, I mean, why are we not accomplishing the goal that in theory they're setting out to accomplish?

SPEAKER_5 (4:17)

Right.

Justin McElroy (4:19)

We probably don't need to kibbit quite as much. I think everybody thinks we're the kind of people that wouldn't want to just randomly kill people. We think everybody's on our team.

SPEAKER_5 (4:27)

Yeah.

Sydnee McElroy (4:27)

I mean, I don't know if that's... I will preface with that. I come from the viewpoint that we should not execute people. The state should not execute people.

That is my viewpoint, my opinion. That is where I stand. We live in a state that does not. Amazingly, the state of West Virginia does not have capital punishment. Thank you, West Virginia. Let's hold on to that one. So, execution by the state has been a feature of all of human history. Right. This is not a new idea.

And certainly, we did so in much more colorful ways in the past.

Justin McElroy (5:01)

Yes. You might remember the Jesus and some of his, that situation.

Sydnee McElroy (5:08)