First a sedative (phenylbarbitol I think) is administered to render the prisoner unconscious, then an overdose of a muscle relaxant is administered which stops the prisoner from breathing. Finally, potassium chloride is injected, which immediately stops the heart.
I don't know which, if any, organs would be useful under those conditions, as transplanting them would subject the recipient to a dose of each of those.
Can you verify that anyone executed in the United States has been an organ donor? I have heard that some have asked, but for various reasons it is not allowed.
It seems the US tried the guillotine once... well, actually 3 times. The first "customer" was a black man. When asked what position he preferred, he says, "Face down so's I can see the cruel earth as I depart for Glory". Bam! His head rolls away like the Biblical stone. Next up is a Moslem. "Face down so I can look around to find the sacred East." Bam! His head rolls away and falls into the lap of Allah.
Then they come to an Engineer. He goes, "Face up, so that I might look into the Heavens." "Click, whoosh, clank" -- the terrible blade hangs up in mid-fall. The Engineer goes, "Hey, I think I see your problem; if you'll just remove that screw head that's sticking out".
Phenobarbital. To my knowledge, there's no such thing as "phenylbarbital".
Succinyl chloride these days, if I recall rightly. Although I think that one of the curare derivatives would likely work just as well, if not better.
Not so much stops it as induces a massive arrythmia - it basically short-circuits the entire electrical system so that the heart goes into fibrillation.
I have no documentation, but I would suspect, due to the manner of action, that if it weren't for the paralyzing properties of the succinyl chloride/curare, the potassium would induce a massive case of St. Vitus' dance, and probably blows brain function all to hell in a matter of seconds, too.
Eh... yes and no... I can see "washing" the heart to dump the potassium overload - Once that was done, I can't think of any reason a gentle "zap" wouldn't restart things. The amount of time between injection and harvest would have to be relatively short, of course, so I'm thinking it unlikley that the kidneys would be any particular trouble - Drain them and "wash" well, and they should do fine. Liver might be problematic. Lungs also unlikely to be a problem if properly "washed". Spleen (do they even try to transplant those?) would likely be a major headache to "clean up". Skin for grafting should be fairly easily salvagable, but I'd expect that bone marrow would be similar to spleen. Beyond that, what is there worth salvaging? Oh... corneas - Likely to be practically unaffected. Stomach and intestines... Again, do they even make an attempt to transplant those?
Personally, aside from the "suicide room" I mentioned elsewhere, I think the best method of execution is probably the russian/chinese procedure: See that down there? POW - one round to the base of the skull. Instant transition from "alive" to "dead" by what amounts to total destruction/disruption of the brain, and EVERYTHING anyone might actually want (with the possible exception of the corneas) is usable - no muss, no fuss, no bother.
Anecdote - obviously humans aren't identical, but... I've been the trigger man for multiple horse euthanasias. A .22LR, .38, or 9mm pistol, aimed from directly behind the left ear, at the right eyeball, is a one-shot instant kill every time. If the horse is standing at the time of the "bang", it's already starting to fall before the sound of the shot dies away. If down, it simply "goes stiff" and then quivers for a short time. Nobody is going to convince me of anything other than the brain is totally disrupted, if not completely destroyed, instantly, and that the horse feels absolutely nothing in making the transition from "live horse" to "dead pile of meat". I highly doubt that the brain even gets a chance to register the sound of the shot, let alone process it into fear/pain/whatever. Given what I know from personal experience with putting down horses via "high velocity intracranial lead injection", and forced to choose the method of my own demise, the russian/chinese method would be my choice, without any hesitation.
"Andrew Mawson" wrote: You can potentially fall into "holes" if you don't understand the "whole" of the English Language which "provokes" people ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Wholly cow! Outstanding example of provocativeness.
"ATP*" wrote: (clip) Steimetz's development of the use of complex notation to simplify electrical
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The use of *complex* notation to *simplify* calculations sounds contradictory, but it is not. For those not trained in this field, I would like to explain that the use of rotating vectors to represent AC involves "real" and "imaginary" numbers, which, together, are called "complex." It's really very simple.
But "Holy" cows are most likely found in India where they are free to roam as held to be sacred, whereas wholly cows may occasionally (just perhaps) turn up in McDonalds
How is it that bleeding hearts conveniently overlook this particular point?
Exactly. Some people have no morals----particularly when it comes to serving their needs. No price to is too great to pay for their victims------but it's unfair to have to pay a price for their actions?
It is my opinion that the threat of a death penalty, just like the threat of religion, keeps many people on the straight and narrow path, people who might otherwise commit crimes. It goes without saying that amongst mankind, there are those that are not concerned with punishment, for reasons that may or may not make sense to rational folks, and, lacking fear of punishment by God, will commit crimes in spite of knowing better. Laws, God, and management alone are not cause enough for such people (and I use that term loosely) to regulate their own behavior. Paying the ultimate price in such instances, so others don't have to, is not unreasonable.
The one thing bleeding hearts always seem to forget is that the perp is responsible for his/her dilemma, not society. Choices were made along the way the lead to their destination. Different choices were certainly an option. I don't give a damn what your childhood was like---if you kill----you should be killed.
Heh! Sort of brings to mind the Hi-Fi Shop murders of the mid 60's in Ogden, Utah, where victims were forced to drink liquid drain cleaner-----with one lucky person getting a pen kicked into his ear. Mayhem, the likes of which you could only dream of.
You don't think animals like these dudes should be put to death? Certainly there's something missing in one's sole to be so lacking in feeling.
Steinmetz was well published. Frequently I see references to texts of his in some of my old electrical books. Apparently he was one of the firsts to apply sound eng. math to electrical design problems. He used the correct mathematical approach to electrical engineering as Diesel used thermodynamics. Diesel could have never explained the distinction of his new "cycle" if it had not been founded in thermodynamics; let alone ever being able to patent it.
Bob Sw>>>> Westinghouse would have remained in the railway brake business
Yes, Gates has been able to keep his (or his company's) ego out of the business, or at least he used to. MicroSoft never suffered from NIH syndrome. If another product was better, they never tried to bluff their way past that competition, they simply bought them. That is VERY good business, and a lot of companies can't work that way. To them, buying a competitor is like holding up the white flag.
The above is not to say I think highly of MS products, I think they are almost entirely awful, buggy bloatware. My desktop Linux system at work finally had to go down due to a power outage after a 410 day run! With 50,000 employees, MicroSoft could do as well, IF they CHOSE to!
A mechanical engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist are each sentenced to die by the guillotine. As the physicist (a woman) is led to the guillotine, she decides that she'd like to observe the blade as it falls, perhaps to verify v=at, and she requests to be strapped in face up. The executioner agrees (why not? it all pays the same...), and straps her in. As the blade falls, it sticks about two thirds of the way down. Seeing this, the crowd cheers - the physicist must be innocent! So the exectuioner unstraps her and sets her free.
The mathematician is next. Being well versed in matters statistical (Perhaps he is an actuary.), he quickly asks to be placed face up as well - after all, the odds of it the blade sticking again are pretty good, especially if the initial conditions are similar. So the excutioner obliges, and once again, the blade sticks about two thirds of the way down. Again the crowd cheers, and the mathematician is also set free.
Finally, it was the enginer's turn. Not willing to do anything in public that is different from his peers, he, too, requests to be placed face up. As the executioner is strapping him in, he's looking up at the blade and studying the track in which it slides. As she does so, he notices something. "Do you see that?", he asks. "About one third the way up? If you fixed that there..."
In some ways, there may well be parallels between Edison and Gates. I haven't heard any stories about Gates having his competitor's factories burned down, it is pretty widely believed that GE/Edison had that done on more than one occasion. Edison came out with a 25 Hour light bulb - but that was the improved version, the first one only lasted about 8 hours. Edison sure knew how to promote a product and create an image - in fact, he may have been the first of that ilk in industrial products. On the other hand, he was living in the times of P.T. Barnum, the Rockefellers and J. P. Morgan. They were "living large" at a level that would make Paris Hilton's head spin!
Edison was ALWAYS in a rut, and refused any attempts to pull him out. Still, he was an incredible inventor, but he could have done so much more if he'd just look at the literature a bit! How could he have tried
10,000 different materials for the light bulb, but missed TUNGSTEN???? And, when a competitor made the first Tungsten bulb, he was suddenly deep in a pit of his own making, with huge factories all set to make a hopelessly obsolete product!
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