How a new death penalty method undermines physician authority

Joel Zivot is a practicing clinician and associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery. He is also an advocate against the use of medicine in capital punishment.

Back in February, Zivot wrote a First Opinion essay shortly after Kenneth Smith was executed using nitrogen gas in Alabama. In “A new Louisiana capital-punishment bill would fundamentally alter physician licensing,” Zivot argues against proposed bills in both Kansas and Louisiana that would allow “death by hypoxia.” Not only is this type of death cruel and painful, he argues, but such a bill would “effectively wrest control of physician conduct from medical boards.” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the bill into law in early March.

In this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” Zivot speaks with host Torie Bosch about what it means for death to be cruel, why he believes the state has no business using medicine to kill, and why he, an ICU physician, has gotten involved firsthand in this work. “Lethal injection is a gross impersonation of a medical act,” Zivot says. “It is a theft of a medical act.”

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