RALEIGH, NC - The state licensing board for doctors gave initial approval Friday for a policy blocking doctors from actively participating in executions, addressing an issue that has weighed heavily on medical professionals in many states.

The North Carolina Medical Board is expected to make a final vote on the proposed policy in two or three months, after receiving comments.

Under the proposed policy, "physician participation in capital punishment is a departure from the ethics of the medical profession."

State law requires a doctor to be present at executions, but the proposal, which the board approved unanimously, prohibits physicians from doing anything but observe.

"This board will not discipline licensees for merely being present at an execution," said Dr. Art McCulloch, a Charlotte anesthesiologist who is chairman of the board's policy committee. "Any physician who engages in any verbal or physical activity that facilitates the execution may be subject to disciplinary action."

The proposed policy is less strict than the stance of the American Medical Association, which equates the presence of a doctor with participating.
A doctor employed by the prison system attends executions at Central Prison in Raleigh, but prison official won't say exactly what he does.

The board decided to consider a policy after several doctors wrote earlier this year seeking guidance when a condemned inmate's attorneys asked a judge to require that an anesthesiologist be present at their client's execution. The judge ended up allowing the prison doctor and monitoring equipment to determine that Willie Brown Jr. was unconscious when he was executed April 21.

The AMA has long opposed physician involvement in executions, and the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists has advised his group's members to "steer clear" of helping states put condemned criminals to death.

The ethical conflict led California to postpone an execution this year after two anesthesiologists refused to participate. The state of Missouri told a federal judge this month that it can't comply with his order to use board-certified anesthesiologists to help in executions because it can't find one willing to do it.