Do no harm?

Last week a story about doctors and nurses aiding in the execution process aired on the far left PBS TV news magazine NOW. The first premise of the report was that the presence of doctors and nurses at executions is necessary in order for the condemned person to be spared any unnecessary pain. The second premise was that it is unethical for doctors to participate in executions because they have sworn by the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm”. They don’t come out and say that they are against the death penalty, but this is obviously what they are underhandedly trying to get their audience to conclude. Their main purpose is probably to get their mostly liberal audience an argument against capital punishment.

The purpose of punishment is to satisfy God’s requirement of justice. The issue is not whether the death penalty is an effective means of controlling crime. The issue is that it is simply immoral to spare criminals from their proper punishment. The more serious the crime is, the more serious the punishment should be.

The most obvious flaw in their argument is that there is nothing wrong with inflicting pain on murderers or any other justly convicted capital offenders. Under the Law of Moses, people were whipped, stoned, and burned to death. If these punishments are unjust, then God is unjust because He is the one who commanded that they be done.

Another flaw in their argument is that the Hippocratic Oath is not the law. It is a pagan concept and it is not Biblical. One could argue, in fact, that such an oath is sinful on several grounds. It may prohibit one from doing his or her duty as a Christian and an American. Jesus said “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” The producers of NOW should be the last ones to be using this argument, since they are constantly touting the benefits and necessity of legalized abortion which are performed by doctors. “Do no harm”? They should be taking the Hypocritical Oath. It is only acceptable to for a doctor to make an agreement not to harm INNOCENT human beings.

They quoted the 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution several times in the program. It states that there shall not be “cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Unfortunately, one of the flaws in our Constitution is that in a very few places our constitution uses relative terms and is therefore vague. One person's idea of what is cruelty and what is unusual may differ from some else’s. The same amendment states that “excessive bail shall not be required”. How much is excessive? It is unreasonable to interpret “cruelty” to mean painful. There is no way to totally extract pain out of punishment. It really isn’t punishment anymore, then, is it? In a world of painless punishments, no realizes what the consequences of sin are. I believe that there should be a limit to the amount of punishment that can be carried out upon a criminal by the state, but the presence of doctors should not be necessary for this. The Bible does set a limit of 40 lashes for the crimes in which whipping was appropriate. I think that the interpretation of the 8th amendment should be that no punishment should go beyond limits that were set in the Bible. I believe this is what the Founders had in mind.

The real question we should be asking is, “What parts of the Law of Moses concerning punishments for crimes should apply to governments today?” This is a difficult question. One man was put to death just for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Jesus said, “He who has not sinned cast the first stone.” Cain and David were not put to death even though they committed murder. This is a really difficult question.