CA Medical Board ignores executioner docs: "We don't get involved in ethical violations".

CA Medical Board ignores executioner docs: "We don't get involved in ethical violations"

As soon as I learned of the ethically repulsive plan for physicians to actively participate in putting a human being to death I called the CA State Medical Board.

The woman who answered the phone at the Board's complaint line (1-800-633-2322) told me the Board does not consider ethical violations, only violations of law.

The Board sends out a quarterly report recounting all the disciplinary actions taken against physicians. Physicians in California have lost their licenses for consensual sexual relationships and consensual business deals with patients (and rightly so - those relations with patients are an abuse of the doctor-patient relationship).

So the Board will pull someone's license for consensual sex with patients or sharing a business - but if the physician particpates in the extremely non-consensual act of deliberately ending the life of an unwilling person - well that doc is home free with the Medical Board.

The person at the Board evinced no concern whatsoever for this matter or its implications for patients.

The person at the Board did say that ethical matters may be referred to the physician's speciality medical society - which in this case would be the anesthesiologists.

Of course, specialists are not obligated to join these societies. And the only way to report the two anesthesiologists who participate in the killing of the prisoner would be to know their names - which San Quentin will not release.

So I have a question for the Medical Board - if cannabalism isn't illegal in California, and we have docs engaging in consensual cannabalism with patients who survive the procedure without complications - are those docs OK to practice in California?

When the physicans who aided and abetted torture of human beings in Abu Gharaib, "Gitmo", or wherever come to California after military service, will the Board allow ex-torturers to start caring for patients? Hey - Alberto Gonzales tells us it's all legal - no criminal activity here.

So if you call the medical board, maybe they can explain to you - if executioners can be doctors, why not torturers? Why not cannibals?

Heck, it's just that pesky ethical stuff - why should the citizens of California assume the Board thinks physicians' ethics are relevant to patient care?