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Long drop hanging is not necessarily as humane as lethal injection. When done properly, it severs the spinal cord, causing the heart to stop beating instantly. However, there is still blood in the brain and it takes several seconds for the brain to exhaust its supply of oxygen. This means that unless the prisoner faints, he will experience his neck snapping and probably some associated pain. Since his brain is now disconnected from anything below his neck, he is unable to give any indication of pain or suffering, sparing the audience from this spectacle.
When lethal injection works properly, the prisoner loses consciousness early on, and the only pain he feels is the needle being inserted.
From my perspective, the most humane types of execution are those that cause the prisoner to lose consciousness before any signicant amount of pain is felt, or those that destroy the brain instantaneously (such as a well-placed gunshot to the head).
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And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.
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