Executed in US may be awake as they suffocate/Mexico City legalises abortion/White-collar workers suffer more blues

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Executed in US may be awake as they suffocate

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=204 & objectid=10436201

Email this storyPrint this story 8:05AM Thursday April 26, 2007By Jane Sutton

 

MIAMI - Some prisoners executed by lethal injection in the United States may die of suffocation while they are still conscious and in pain, University of Miami researchers have said in a study that concluded the drugs do not work as intended.

The study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine, raised new questions about whether the lethal cocktail violates the US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lethal injection is the primary method of execution for 37 US states and the federal government, though more than a dozen states have halted or suspended the procedure because of legal or ethical questions.

The drugs used are the anesthetic thiopental, pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and lungs, and the electrolyte potassium chloride to stop the heart.

First adopted by Oklahoma lawmakers looking for a humane alternative to the electric chair, the combination is supposed to produce unconsciousness and then death due to respiratory and cardiac arrest.

 

 

 

 

 

The researchers studied drug dosages and time elapsed until death in 42 lethal injections in North Carolina and eight in California.

They concluded the thiopental might have been insufficient to keep the prisoners unconscious in some cases, based on concentrations in their blood after death.

They said the potassium chloride injection, which causes an intense burning sensation, did not reliably hasten death because prisoners given it died no faster than those who got only the other two drugs.

They concluded that pancuronium was the only reliably fatal part of the cocktail, meaning the executed may actually have died of suffocation as it paralyzed their lungs.

In cases where the injection was botched and the drugs were delivered into the muscle or under the skin rather than into the veins, prisoners would by fully aware as the paralysis took hold and the potassium chloride was administered, said Teresa Zimmers, who led the study.

"It would sort of be the equivalent of slowly suffocating while being burned alive," Zimmers said in a telephone interview.

The researchers said that was likely the experience of Florida inmate Angel Diaz, who took 34 minutes to die in December after the needles were inserted improperly.

Doctors and nurses are ethically barred from administering lethal injections. But even when the injections were done properly, there were doubts the anesthesia was adequate to avert suffering.

It was unclear whether levels measured in the blood after death accurately reflected those before death, the authors cautioned. But they said execution witnesses have reported that some prisoners were visibly distressed even after the anesthesia was injected and in four cases, they tried to sit up.

"The reason that people support lethal injection is because they perceive it to be a humane medical procedure," said Dr. Leonidas Koniaris, associate professor of surgery and senior author on the report. "Here we provide more evidence that it is anything but that."

Since the US Supreme Court upheld the death penalty in 1976, the United States has executed 1,070 people, 901 of them by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

- REUTERS

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=204 & objectid=10436152

Mexico City legalises abortion

Email this storyPrint this story 5:00AM Thursday April 26, 2007

 

MEXICO CITY - The Mexican capital legalised abortion yesterday, defying the church but delighting feminists in the world's second-largest Roman Catholic country.

Mexico City politicians voted 46 to 19 to pass a bill allowing women to have an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The vote split Mexico and prompted a letter last week from Pope Benedict urging Mexican bishops to oppose it. Riot police kept groups apart outside the assembly. Only Cuba, Guyana and Puerto Rico have allowed abortion on demand in Latin America.

Church leaders threatened to excommunicate leftist deputies, mostly from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who voted in favour of lifting the abortion ban, which will remain in the rest of the country.

- REUTERS

 

White-collar workers suffer more blues

Email this storyPrint this story 5:00AM Wednesday April 25, 2007

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=204 & objectid=10435969

 

Money really can't buy happiness, according to an Australian survey showing lawyers and other well-paid white-collar workers are more likely than others to suffer depression.

The nationwide survey of 17,000 people, including more than 7500 professionals, found that almost one in 10 workers in white-collar sectors reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms.

This was much higher than the 6.3 per cent registered for the general population including all professions, the unemployed and the homeless.

The legal profession had the worst result, with almost 16 per cent reporting symptoms of clinical depression. Next were accountants and insurance underwriters, both on 10 per cent.

People in IT services, architecture and engineering also had depression rates above the average.

The survey by Beyondblue, an organisation devoted to fighting depression, also shows those under 30 had the highest rates of depression and were the most likely to "self-medicate" with drugs and alcohol.

 

 

 

Beyondblue's deputy chief executive, psychologist Nicole Highet, said: "We often associate depression with the most socially disadvantaged [and] people under financial pressure, but here's a whole different group."

It was difficult to pinpoint what made some groups more vulnerable to depression, she said, it was likely to be driven by work pressures.

"It seems that with law in particular, there's a problem with employee expectations and their working reality," Dr Highet said.

"People base their whole identities on being successful in their role and when it doesn't live up to expectations, and they fail to keep a work-life balance, that impacts on their mental health."

Among women lawyers, the average age of first pregnancy was 39, "reflecting the all-or-nothing pressure that the sector places on individuals", Dr Highet said.

Law Institute of Victoria chief Michael Brett Young said the survey supported anecdotal evidence that depression was a growing problem.

"Our message is no one should feel ashamed about being stressed," Mr Young said.

"Ask for help from your colleagues rather than suffer in silence."

Dr Highet said private firms were slower than the public sector in embracing depression awareness programmes.

"It is vital that individual organisations equip themselves with knowledge and understanding about the condition and how to recognise it and manage it within a workplace setting," Dr Highet said.

The data also found that students had higher-than-average depression rates.

They also had more negative attitudes and misconceptions about people with depression than any other group.

- AAP