Significance
Per Ford v. Wainwright, a psychotic inmate who does not have an understanding of what is about to occur is not competent to be executed and therefore cannot be executed. The complex issues of forcibly medicating an individual to make him competent for execution posed in Perry v. Louisiana illustrates the conflict between the judicial interests in imposing capital punishment for certain murderers and the medical physician's Hippocratic Oath, "first do no harm." Medical ethics are primarily guided by "first do no harm". If other states follow Louisiana's example and specify that the judiciary must provide legal support for this medical ethical imperative, the practice of forcibly medicating death row inmate would cease, and the conflict between these issues would disappear. However, currently these conflicting issues continue to exist.
Read more about this topic: Perry V. Louisiana
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, “I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet.” But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.”
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“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)