Harvard Law Professor: Medicalization of Death is Problematic
From the interview:
[...] Cohen: The idea here is that we think that execution is the state ending someone's life, and we don't want to make that look like a medical procedure when it's not a medical procedure. The American Medical Association as well as many other medical associations have taken a firm position that lethal injection and participating in execution in general is incompatible with being a doctor because it's primum non nocere, 'first do no harm.' [...]