[JURIST] Amnesty International [advocacy website] Thursday urged medical professionals worldwide to refrain from participating in executions. In a new report [text; press release] examining the practice of execution by lethal injection [AI fact sheet], Amnesty said doctors and nurses break their ethical oaths by assisting in lethal injections and urged them to withdraw their cooperation. Amnesty also criticized governments for putting medical personnel in such a position. BBC News has more.

Doctors in several US jurisdictions have recently raised concerns about medical participation in lethal injection executions. Late last month a North Carolina state judge ruled that the North Carolina Medical Board does not have the authority [JURIST report] to discipline doctors that participate in state death penalty procedures. A new Board policy purporting to block such participation led to North Carolina suspending lethal injections [JURIST report] early this year.