Licensed+To+Kill

Picture someone who poses as a warm, inviting, sensitive, trusting licensed nurse caregiver who pretends to be something they are not. A person you would never suspect has less than the best intentions in caring for you. Their nurturing hands are supposed to be for healing, soft, gentle, protective, to extend the quality and quantity of life, yet they when they reach out and touch someone, those same hands take it. Imagine a nurse who promises to take care of you, protect you, but thinks, believes, and will end your life because he or she feels like it, has been given orders to do so, and or cannot stand to see what they may think is a person suffering and all in the name of mercy, compassion, duty, and will.

** The Killing Facility **



Legalized nurse killing is authorized in state and government mental institutions and prisons where executions are still performed. There is evidence surrounding mercy and legalized intentional killings by nurses in hospitals, prisons, and state and private mental institutions. ¹Benedict states, “Nursing has traditionally been regarded as a caring profession. It comes as a shock, therefore, to learn that nurses actively and intentionally killed thousands of their most vulnerable patients-mentally and physically disabled children and adults-and that these killings occurred in the not so distant past and with the approval of the National Socialist Government of Germany from 1939 until 1945.” Over 10,000 patients were killed by nurses at Hadamar by the year 1941. Susan Benedict’s, CRNA, DSN, FAAN, published work, on this atrocity provides an in depth look into the secrecy of legalized nurse killing in a state and or government ran mental facility.

However, there is evidence from the trials of other nurses, charged with murders, did not object and, in fact, thought they were doing good by “releasing patients from their suffering". This evidence substantiates that nurses do feel empowered and justified to kill because they are licensed medical professionals and think, believe, and are convinced they are fulfilling their professional duties and obligations within their fields. How can society expect nurses to rightfully determine what the difference is between murder, death, mercy killing, intentionally ending life, an d judge the acts of such practices when the lines are blurred for nurses given legal authority and a license to kill? Not only do governments shield them and pass laws to kill at will or by any other directives, but some nurses are compelled that it is their duty. How can society expect nurses to rightfully determine what the difference is between murder, death, mercy killing, intentionally ending life, and judge the acts of such practices when the lines are blurred for nurses given legal authority and a license to kill?


 * The History **

³Benedict reflects in her research that in the nineteenth century, a eugenics “science” arose in Europe and the United States. Based partially on Darwinism, eugenics believed that a stronger and better human race could be developed by eliminating “weaker” lineage including people with hereditary diseases. Eugenics became very popular in the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth century. Further exploration of such practices continues to exist just in different forms. Dave Homes and Carey Federman, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, published an article of the evil committed in American prisons regarding nurses were given permission and authority to kill inmates and were protected by the laws to do so.

This excerpt uncovers how nurses are involved in capital punishment procedures and to bring international attention to the nursing community pervasive “caring” nursing discourse and a most unethical nursing practice in the United States. In the U.S., the penal system has produced some of the most notorious nurse killers in the profession. State and government ran prisons are a festering cesspool of legalized bureaucracy that recruits, trains, and supports nurses killing inmates who the state and or government deems condemned. The information in Federman’s and Homes’ work will support my argument that there are environments, created on purpose, that can and do severely distort a nurse’s ability to discern what is right in the areas of moral, ethical, and legal terms as it pertains to the end of a person’s life and how nurses do feel they can make such important decisions, because they have been given a license to kill.


 * American Prisons: Death By Execution **

American prisons are notorious institutions for nurses to kill legally through executions. ⁵ Homes and Federman state that doctors, nurses, and or any licensed professional now represent the executioner in the state and or government ran penal systems. Some states now require the patient to be sedated prior to lethal injection which has to be administered by a doctor, nurse, and or qualified medical professional. More than half the countries in the world forbid the death penalty. The U.S. has accelerated the rate of executing inmates. Six people each month are executed in the U.S. and more than 800 since 1976 (as of December, 2002) and 3500 on death row waiting to die, some for years. Over 85% of executions recorded by Amnesty International occurred in the U.S., China, and Saudi Arabia. In the U.S. 37 states (except Nebraska) that still sanction the death penalty use lethal injection as the primary or secondary method of execution. The U.S. federal military and government also use lethal injection as the sole method of execution.



⁶The move towards lethal punishment was not solely by humanitarian sentiment, but rather by ‘a desire on the part of legislatures to neutralize public opposition to the death penalty after Gregg v. Georgia. Economics also played a role. The state of Texas lists the cost of lethal injection at $86.08. Florida, by contrast, uses the electric chair and pays the person who throws the switch $150.00. Focusing on the general public’s reaction directs attention away from the healthcare professional’s involvement with the prisoner and his confinement, a relationship that is not only hidden from public view, but is also legally protected. Interestingly enough, 11 states deny that lethal injection is a medical procedure, indemnify healthcare executioners against legal harm, and shield their names from the public, while other state laws are silent regarding execution protocols.
 * It Is Cheaper Not To Keep Them **


 * Where Do We Go From Here **

⁷After witnessing the first electrical execution in New York, in 1890, Dr. Alfred Southwick, the inventor of the electric chair, said, ‘We live in a higher civilization from this day’. I would not advocate for that statement to a part of anything scientific and especially not attribute any form of higher civilization because of an invention of such nature. Science was not and is not for a higher civilized way of dying. It is to provide a higher quality of life in a civilized world that has a heart for the living period no matter who they are or the state of their mental or physical well-being.

⁸Birchley explains, while nurses may thus have practical exemption from the legal consequences of their actions so long as they act on the orders of a doctor, this judicial position puts them at odds with their professional responsibilities, which envisage nurses as independent professionals who are to be held liable for their own actions. This fracture between judicial and professional expectation creates the possibility of nurses being legally exonerated but professionally censured—a possibility made all the more immediate by the multiple, sometimes conflicting, layers of regulatory and managerial expectations of the scope of nursing practice which can produce strict judgments against individual practitioners.

In conclusion, there is no question in my mind that nurses conceive having a medical license enables them to make judgment decisions regarding life sustaining or ending treatment. The information in this review peels back so many layers on how difficult it is to determine the nurses’ intentions and actions morally, ethically, and legally. The complicated variables, different forms, and capacities in different countries under various circumstances and laws of how a nurse can function in the role of having a medical license to kill is terrifying and beyond disturbing. The mere facts that they can be recruited, trained, silenced, and operate as legal murderers can and does promote a killer mentality whether it is done legally or not. It also can and does foster some measure of confidence in nurses to believe not only do they have a right, but the right, because they are given a license to kill, to do so with clear motive, directive, legal support, intent, and conscious.


 * References **

¹’²’³Benedict, Susan. //Killing While Caring: The Nurses of Hadamar.// Issues in Mental Health Nursing. 24:59-79, 2003.

⁸Birchley, Giles. //Angels of Mercy? The Legal and Professional Implications of Withdrawal of Life Sustaining Treatment by Nurses in England and Whales. // Medical Law Review, Summer 2012, pp. 337-361.

⁴’⁵’⁶’⁷Cary Federman and Dave Holmes. //Killing for The State: The Darkest Side of American Nursing.// Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10 (1): 2-10.

⁹’¹⁰ Hadamar: @http://ahrp.org/30999-2/ ¹¹@https://newrepublic.com/article/117898/lethal-injection-photos-angel-diazs-botched-execution-florida ¹²@http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-90Tq3VDCoMk/T8suteaOvXI/AAAAAAAACG8/toE4tsbTuBM/s640/Snow-White-Huntsman-Costumes-Video.png
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