An Injection of Ethics

On listening to Hack, in a seemingly vain attempt to catch up on my Podcasts, I thought of the dilemma faced around lethal injection.

It is claimed that often the injections is administered by Prison Guards or Executioners with no medical training. The injections are made of three stages, 1st (Sodium Thiopental) to induce Coma, 2nd (Pancuronium) stops muscles including Diaphragm (i.e. This will kill you) and 3rd (Potassium Chloride) stops the heart. You could possibly see that this isn't exactly a layperson activity.

The reason given for this is that for a Doctor to engage in this work would be a violation of the hippocratic oath... Yet most States require a Doctor to be present to certify Death.

Hmmm, one might see something wrong if the qualified people refusing to conduct the procedures...

Innovation is not subsidising Corporate R&D

I recall the debates over Digital TV in 1998 here in Australia, and Government was faced with mandating not only a rollout period but a format for delivery. To grossly simplify, the choices were between Broad- and Datacasting. Datacasting would move Australia to the forefront of the Information Age. Datacasting essentially allows the consumer to pull the program at their leisure looking like a souped up version of i-view rather than the Broadcast model which centrally controls what and when is available to be consumed, just a digitisation of the contemporary system. One might see that an investment in such a program might have helped our lagging broadband issue...

I raise this in light of some more myopic Australian Innovation Sponsorship... take our stance on environmental technologies. Once again it appears our government chooses to support the Commercially-favourable technologies over real innovation. Surely government should be investing in potentials and not the R&D budgets of Industry.