Friday, January 11, 2008
Tell Me When This Hurts
One of the syndicated columnists published in the closest thing we have to a metropolitan daily in Indiana tackled the ongoing arguments about the death penalty earlier this week. The point of contention for her -- and, apparently, the rest of America that doesn't have anything better to do -- was the argument that lethal injections inflict undue pain on the person being executed.
The pull-out quote was especially interesting, and at the same time bewildering: "No one has proven than an executed inmate has felt any pain from the three-drug cocktail."
Well, duh. Do we need some kind of genius to tell us that there are no exit polls on lethal injections? What part of the word "lethal" doesn't the columnist get?
That's like saying that no one has proven that a fetus has felt pain from an abortion (a question that, believe it or not, Indiana legislators are currently being urged to incorporate into law, and thereby into the "information" physicians provide to pregnant women). How exactly would one interview an aborted fetus, or an aborted murderer, on the subject?
Face it, some things are unknowable, unprovable. Like the existence of God, the number of the million-dollar case on "Deal or No Deal," and what makes Michael Jackson tick.
We don't know if Timothy McVeigh's brain went, "Ouch, that stings a little," when they injected him. All we know for sure is that the return of the guillotine would cut off the debate, so to speak. Who says the French always get it wrong?
(For the record, I am actually opposed to the death penalty in all forms. I just couldn't help noticing the idiocy of that column quote and the whole notion of trying to use the "unproven" as some kind of scientific argument instead of what it really is, one person's uninformed-by-any-facts opinion.)
The pull-out quote was especially interesting, and at the same time bewildering: "No one has proven than an executed inmate has felt any pain from the three-drug cocktail."
Well, duh. Do we need some kind of genius to tell us that there are no exit polls on lethal injections? What part of the word "lethal" doesn't the columnist get?
That's like saying that no one has proven that a fetus has felt pain from an abortion (a question that, believe it or not, Indiana legislators are currently being urged to incorporate into law, and thereby into the "information" physicians provide to pregnant women). How exactly would one interview an aborted fetus, or an aborted murderer, on the subject?
Face it, some things are unknowable, unprovable. Like the existence of God, the number of the million-dollar case on "Deal or No Deal," and what makes Michael Jackson tick.
We don't know if Timothy McVeigh's brain went, "Ouch, that stings a little," when they injected him. All we know for sure is that the return of the guillotine would cut off the debate, so to speak. Who says the French always get it wrong?
(For the record, I am actually opposed to the death penalty in all forms. I just couldn't help noticing the idiocy of that column quote and the whole notion of trying to use the "unproven" as some kind of scientific argument instead of what it really is, one person's uninformed-by-any-facts opinion.)
