White coated healer or black coated executioner: Health professionals and capital punishment

In some countries and some jurisdictions health professionals are involved in the process of capital punishment. Their involvement raises difficult ethical issues and the more so with changing attitudes to, and growing support for, assisted suicide, greater respect for autonomy and more universal promotion of human rights, including those of prisoners. These issues are discussed in relation to the various stages of the capital punishment process from the investigation of a potential capital offence to the removal of executed prisoners' tissues and organs for transplantation. It is suggested that some of the ethical difficulties can be resolved, or at least ameliorated, by having regard to the three core concepts of medical ethics: autonomy, best interests and rights. But active involvement of health professionals in capital punishment, however justified ethically, runs the risk that ‘reforms’ will even more deeply entrench what remains of the death penalty, thus making it more resistant to complete repeal.