"This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing." "Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo is on a mission to investigate the science of killing." "It's a hell of a start, God!" "Oh, my God!" "He wants to find a method that is unquestionably humane, and to do so he will delve into one of the darkest areas of science." "It's really tantamount to torture in my view." "His aim is to try to understand what it feels like to die by execution." "Probably a bit like having the combined pain of a heart attack and asphyxiation at the same time." "My basic attitude is, "So they suffer a little pain, who cares?"" "In his quest, Michael will undergo a set of unique experiments." "Oh, my head is quite heavy." "Now my peripheral is going, I'm going grey." "He will push his body to the brink of death." "Put up the switches." "Put up the switches." "Put up the switches or you will die." "All because of one fundamental belief." "If the state kills people, we want to do it as humanely as possible." "I think most people agree." "55 countries in the world use execution as the ultimate punishment." "The killing of prisoners has long been the cause of great controversy." "As a politician, Michael Portillo debated the issue time and again." "I have a pretty chequered history on the death penalty." "When I went into politics in the '80s, I voted in favour of the death penalty, and then in the '90s I voted against it." "And it wasn't really a fundamental change about the issue." "It was just that at that time there were a lot of miscarriages of justice, and I thought, "You can't be killing people if you're not certain whether" ""they did it or not."" "The problem's not just about whether the death penalty is right or wrong." "It's also about how it's carried out." "Recently, firing squads have been deemed unreliable by the Vietnamese government." "A botched hanging in Iraq led to Saddam Hussein's half-brother being decapitated." "There's great controversy about whether the methods that are used are humane, whether they cause pain or not, and I think," ""How difficult can it be at the beginning of the 21st century" ""for science to come up with a way of killing people that is humane?"" "And so that's what I'm looking into, a humane way of executing people." "Michael is heading to America, where its primary method of execution is also in crisis." "All lethal injections in the state of Florida, all death penalty cases put on hold by the governor." "California has postponed executions by lethal injection." "The Supreme Court takes up the controversy over lethal injection, which some say can cause excruciating pain." "Michael wants to find out if the lethal injection is scientifically sound or torture disguised as a medical procedure." "Good morning." "Yes, sir." "My name is Michael Portillo, I've come to see Warden Cain." "He's come to Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana, the largest maximum-security prison in the US." "The vast majority of prisoners at Angola are violent offenders serving life sentences." "Over 70% will die here." "On the left, this is a visiting room..." "Warden Bill Cain has overseen the execution of six people at Angola and is well versed in the process." "Here we are..." "This is the actual chamber, right here." "Warden, you... you do feel like a chill going down your spine, don't you?" "You really do, especially for the first time, but I'm going to be..." "Do you still get that feeling?" "No, I don't get it any more, but..." "You've had it, though, right?" "I have." "OK, so what we have..." "These are intravenous lines, so this is going to go in his left arm, and then you have one that's going to go in the right arm." "And the reason that I want two is because the worst thing would be to lose the vein, or the IV not work after you're in the process, and then you have a real mess here on your hands." "So with two, you have two sets of drugs, and then if one were to fail, you have the other." "Warden Cain believes he's compassionate to the prisoners in his efforts to ensure a smooth execution, but state regulations means that the procedure is carried out by technicians rather than doctors." "Then I'm going to open the door and the EMTs are going to come in here." "What are they?" "Emergency medical technicians." "We don't use doctors or nurses because of the Hippocratic oath." "That being the oath that any doctor gives to preserve life." "Yeah, the doctors give an oath to do no harm." "To do no harm." "And so therefore, we don't ask them to do it." "Coroner and eyewitness reports from across America suggest that this widespread lack of expertise can result in painful deaths." "December 13th 2006, Angel Diaz." "After the first injection was given, Mr Diaz continued to move and was squinting and grimacing as he tried to mouth words." "The medical examiner stated that the needle had gone through Mr Diaz's vein and out the other side, so the deadly chemicals were injected into soft tissue rather than the vein." "Michael is meeting Dr Jay Chapman, the man who actually invented the lethal injection procedure." "He believes some ill-trained technicians are undermining the credibility of its invention." "As I once characterised it, one never imagined that idiots would be doing this procedure." "Who are the idiots?" "Well, people that, for instance, have inserted an intravenous needle toward the hand rather than toward the body." "Nobody would ever inject a needle that way but..." "But somebody did?" "I understood that in one execution, this is exactly what happened." "If the protocol is carried out as it should be, there absolutely will be no sensation of pain." "Dr Chapman's lethal injection was adapted from a standard surgical procedure." "It uses three drugs." "The first of these was an extremely commonly used drug to induce unconsciousness for the introduction of anaesthesia." "The second drug which was specified was a muscular paralytic agent." "This is used in surgery so that muscles do not react as the knife is used or the procedure is done." "And the third drug induces cardiac arrest." "Given that you believe that sometimes the process is carried out by what you call idiots, could it then cause pain to the prisoner?" "Yes, it could, but my basic attitude is," ""So they suffer a little pain, who cares?"" "It's not..." "It's not horrific pain, it's not excruciating pain in my opinion, so who cares?" "But not everyone agrees with Dr Chapman's assessment, particularly because a lack of expertise may not be the only source of pain." "In fact, a much bigger controversy centres on the second drug in the cocktail, the paralysing agent pancuronium bromide." "When was your operation?" "January 24th..." "Carol Weihrer knows better than anyone what this drug feels like." "During a routine eye operation, she suddenly became fully conscious while the paralytic was injected into her body." "I was given the short-acting anaesthesia, then became completely aware, and I received two separate doses of the second drug, the pancuronium bromide, which feels like ignited jet fuel going through your body." "You feel like you're absolutely on fire, it is...excruciating." "You're trapped in a dead body, you can't move, you can't do anything." "Carol has been a key witness in 15 court cases against the lethal injection." "She believes most executed inmates go through the same experience as she did." "The anaesthetic they're using is the short-acting, five-minute version." "A lethal injection takes between ten and 12 minutes on a good day, and I feel very seriously that most of those inmates may be put out for a couple of minutes, and then they're paralysed and conscious" "and feeling that pancuronium bromide go through their system, and if they do, they're on fire and they can't breathe, and they die from suffocation before their heart is ever stopped." "Carol gave a very moving testimony about the pain she suffered from pancuronium, the prisoners suffer that." "It's a possibility which the American courts take seriously, so... the lethal injection...is questioned." "So it can't be the perfect killing method." "To find a more humane device, Michael will investigate the science behind other methods of execution still used in the US today - the gas chamber, hanging and the electric chair." "Could one of the alternatives be a better solution than the lethal injection?" "Hanging is carried out in Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and is still available in two states in America." "Michael has come to a crash-test lab in Bedfordshire to meet professor of medical engineering Len Nokes, an expert in the mechanics of hanging." "Just walk over here, Michael." "I thought you'd find this interesting, recognise the shirt?" "It's my shirt, you've made him look like me." "I would say he's roughly your weight, and what we'd like to do is hang him." "So would you mind putting the noose round your own neck?" "I don't have much experience of this, I'm afraid." "Well, just slot it on top first and...yeah." "Short-drop hanging was the standard form of execution up until the late 19th century." "Prisoners were dropped from a very short height and were slowly strangled to death." "But then the British developed a method designed to be more humane." "I'm going to show you the science, or supposed science, behind British hanging." "They constructed a table about 1886, and this is it." "Now, if we were going to hang you, Michael, using this table," "I need to know what your weight is." "About 200 pounds." "200, easy, 200 pounds, let's go for 196 pounds." "That's very kind." "Look across, and we have to now drop you through a height of 6'5"." "The experiment is looking to deliver an instantaneous and humane death by completing the hangman's fracture." "The classic hangman's fracture happens between the second and third cervical vertebra." "The idea is that you fracture that joint, and you pull them all apart, and by disrupting the joint like that, you cause damage to the spinal cord and the brain stem." "Very important, because if the brain stem is damaged in any way, it controls your heartbeat and your breathing." "Even if it doesn't snap the spinal cord, it just tugs it violently, there's a good chance that that will stop your heart?" "Correct." "With the aid of hi-tech slow-motion cameras, Professor Nokes can now analyse the effects of the drop on the body and conclude whether or not" "British hanging is indeed humane." "Phil?" "Three, two, one, release." "Wow!" "That's a lot of energy." "That's a lot of energy." "The body comes down a long, long way." "Oh, my goodness..." "It nearly takes the head off there, doesn't it?" "It lifts this head all the way..." "That's a perfect illustration." "I would be highly surprised if you didn't get the necessary damage to the cervical cord and the brain stem, given what I've just seen." "So we've found a humane way of killing people?" "Well..." "If we could do that 100% of the time, the answer to that would be yes, but that doesn't always happen, because it depends on the anatomy of the individual." "Right." "You and I have different neck sizes." "We have different muscle bulk." "We may weigh the same, but our anatomy is totally different." "But there is one way to guarantee immediate death, and that's to extend the rope length." "Professor Nokes's team has adjusted the dummy's metal neck to demonstrate the effect this would have on the human spine." "I've added this amount of drop, that's all." "Three, two, one, release." "Oh, God!" "Oh!" "That is foul." "Dear, oh dear..." "And that's with just a couple of feet more on the drop height." "I think in slow motion, it'll even be more spectacular." "Wow." "It just takes the head off so..." "It's just completing the fracture of the vertebra." "It rips everything apart." "This is what happened to Saddam Hussein's brother, presumably?" "I believe so." "Hanging is so dependent on individual physiology that there have been cases of decapitation even with the use of the British table." "To complicate matters further, different countries use different tables to calculate the rope's length." "I just want to show you the differences between the American and the British tables." "Right, so these are people of the same weight, and you're saying that the Americans would hang him... what, two feet longer?" "That's right." "We've already seen the difference that two foot can make to the drop height and the consequences." "Yeah." "Which one of these is the correct one?" "You tell me." "I can't, and I'm the scientist." "There is an extreme lack of science in these two tables." "You're telling me that even in the 21st century, with all our scientific knowledge, we couldn't devise a foolproof table." "There's too many variables, too many, and I just don't think we could ever produce a perfect table." "Methods of execution have always mirrored the scientific advances of the age." "At the end of the 19th century, a revolutionary technological development was vital to the creation of the iconic symbol of execution." "Thomas Edison, the father of electricity, was locked in a bitter battle with rival George Westinghouse for control of the emerging electrical utility industry." "Edison wanted to show the world that his rival's system, based on an alternating current, was a danger to the public." "And to prove it, he electrocuted a circus elephant." "Edison's scheming went further." "He got his researchers to develop an electric chair using Westinghouse's" "AC system and recommended it to be used to kill criminals, the electric chair was born." "Today it's still available in ten American states and was last used as recently as September 2007." "Despite its ongoing use, there is no clear scientific study on the electrocution effects on the prisoner." "This may be a little messy, so if you want to put on these..." "So Michael is meeting high-voltage specialist Nick Field to reproduce the conditions seen during an electric-chair execution." "Forensic pathologist Peter Vanezis is an expert in electrical injuries and will analyse the effect it produces on the body." "So you've seen a lot of dead bodies in your time." "I'm afraid so, yes." "Everything from ordinary coroner's cases to criminal events, deaths in custody." "Yes." "All that kind of stuff." "Just give me a hand?" "Sure." "Nick is using the next best thing to the human body to carry out the experiment." "Hell's teeth!" "A pig is actually the closest in nature to human physiology." "This is about the same weight as a lightish man or a typical woman and an excellent test subject in most ways." "What is the current that you apply in an electric chair, an electrocution?" "In this case, the shock is 2,450 volts." "2,000...?" "450." "God..." "I mean, a plug at home is what, 240?" "Yes, it's approximately ten times." "Good Lord above." "In a typical electric chair, you're connected in three places." "Your head and two clamps around either your ankles or your calves." "This is a saturated salt solution, and these are natural sponges." "Why brine?" "Brine is much more conductive than pure water." "And this is what the prisoner would feel." "He would feel a hat being stuffed on his head full of wet sponges." "Yes." "Just as in a real electrocution, the subject will receive an electric shock for 15 seconds." "LOUD FIZZING" "Hell of a lot of flaming here at the feet." "It must be all the fat around the..." "Nothing at the head yet." "Not yet, no." "Hell of a smell of burning now, a lot of smoke." "So...he'd be dead by now." "Maybe he'd be dead." "We're not sure yet, to be honest with you." "Some people have survived longer." "I mean, that's the whole point of giving them more than two or three shocks sometimes." "But doesn't 2,400 volts just stop your heart?" "Well, the problem is the effect on the heart can vary quite a bit." "You can get what's called ventricular fibrillation, which is the muscle just going into a very fast spasm, so it may not affect your heart straight away." "It would have other effects on the body such as partial asphyxiation." "The point is, if it acts on the muscles and causes spasms, you won't be able to open and close your chest to breathe." "It's standard practice to shock the prisoner several times to ensure death." "In 1990, Jesse Tafero from Florida had to be given three jolts before he stopped breathing." "Rather than using a natural sponge, the executioners bought a synthetic one at the local store, and it proved to be much less conductive." "In this part of the experiment, Nick has adjusted the sponges to more accurately reflect what happened in Tafero's execution." "Oh, even more crackling..." "Oh, my...!" "That is dreadful." "That is dreadful!" "That is dreadful." "That is appalling." "Can you see all the fat running down the pig's face?" "Oh, that's foul." "There's the sponge underneath." "Oh, a terrible burning on the snout, Professor." "Yes, you've got a burn there where the rim of the cap was, and you've also got a burn at the back between the ears and including the ears as well, and that's very similar to the sort of burn" "that you get in a real execution." "So what's happened?" "Oh, my God, it's gone straight through." "It has, it's basically gone down to the bone." "It almost amputated that part of the hoof, really." "Would you imagine that this would be, in the American terminology, a cruel and unusual punishment?" "I think it absolutely is, and it's really tantamount to torture in my view." "Really?" "Yep." "Michael's obtained a report that shows rare photographs of an inmate put to death by the electric chair." "After Davis's airflow had been blocked by the mouth strap, the face mask and his own blood," "Davis made several sounds under the face mask, which was described variously as muffled screams or yells." "The body was mutilated by burns on the head, face and leg, and he was covered in blood because blood was pouring out of his nose." "There's no way this is a perfect way of killing people." "It's potentially very painful and extremely gory for the witnesses, too." "There is one method of execution that could be much less painful than the electric chair, but only if the prisoner remains calm and co-operates in their death." "The use of cyanide gas as a killing agent was pioneered on the battlefield during the First World War." "It was then used by the Nazis as part of their genocide programme." "It remains available in five states in America." "Sometimes before executions, the gas chamber is tested using an animal subject." "Acid is placed under the chair." "And at the assigned moment, the executioner drops cyanide pellets into the acid, releasing hydrogen cyanide gas." "The subject dies by asphyxiation." "Michael is meeting biochemistry professor Christopher Cooper to understand what happens to the body in a hydrogen cyanide gas chamber." "Our cells require oxygen to make energy, and each cell has a place where the oxygen converts and reacts with the food we eat to make energy for the cell." "Cyanide interferes directly with this process." "It binds to exactly the same place where oxygen binds, so the heart's pumping and lungs are working, oxygen's getting around, none of the cells can use the oxygen." "Would you be in pain during that period?" "It's probably a bit like having the combined pain from a heart attack, brain seizures and asphyxiation at the same time." "Would there be a way of speeding the process up?" "One of the complications is you ask the prisoner to co-operate in their own death, such that if they breathe calmly and deeply at the beginning and get as much hydrogen cyanide gas into their brain as possible, they get unconscious as quickly as possible and suffer less pain." "Michael wants to find out if it really is possible for prisoners to remain calm and co-operative in the gas chamber, so that their moment of death is relatively painless." "What we've got is your personal protective equipment, which we'll size and fit to you now." "Together with a group of volunteers he will be exposed to a non-lethal but highly noxious gas which provokes a number of similar bodily reactions to cyanide, its lethal counterpart." "Don the respirator, chin in first." "Make sure that the harness is central on the crown." "CS gas is used by the military to simulate chemical attacks, and, like cyanide, it provokes a terrible irritation to the skin, eyes and lungs, as well as gasping, confusion and vomiting." "To establish that the gas chamber can be reasonably painless, all Michael has to do is breathe in the noxious gas calmly and deeply and say his full name and date of birth." "Is everybody OK?" "OK!" "We're now going to be exposed to the CS." "What I want you to do is remain calm, keep your breathing going as much as possible and keep your eyes open." "Undo the zip of your suit." "Pull back the hood." "One, two, three!" "Keep your eyes open." "OK, state your name." "COUGHING, CONFUSED MUMBLING" "State your name and date of birth." "State your name and date of birth." "State your name and date of birth." "INAUDIBLE RESPONSE" "State your name and date of birth." "Declan Swan, 28th..." "State your name and date of birth." "Michael Portillo, May...'53." "OK, follow the man one behind the other." "Keep going." "Keep going." "Follow the tape." "Face the opposite direction, so you get the wind coming into your face." "The will to learn the lesson." "Deep breaths!" "It was completely...horrible." "Stinging." "I couldn't keep my eyes open for a moment, oh..." "Eyes are absolutely...messed up." "I found it very difficult to speak," "I couldn't get my whole date of birth out even." "It was great to get out of there." "Look at me." "Thank you." "Oh!" "I think this experiment..." "shows that it is pretty unlikely that someone who is asked to breathe in...a killer gas is going to do so calmly, cos the gas I had here was not a killer gas, but it was an irritant," "and of course, you know, all my intentions of... breathing in calmly just went straight out of the window," "I just couldn't do it at all." "Michael has now explored all the key methods of execution still in use in the western world." "So where does that leave the search?" "I've been thinking about the criteria for a perfect killing device based on what I've seen so far." "First of all, it mustn't require any medical expertise, because doctors don't want to be involved because of their Hippocratic oath." "That rules out the lethal injection, or, for that matter, any of the methods involved in human euthanasia." "It's got to be a quick and painless death that's guaranteed, which rules out hanging cos it's not guaranteed." "It mustn't be gory, that rules out electrocution." "And...it can't depend on prisoner co-operation, and that rules out gas, because the prisoner's got to do something which the prisoner can't do." "So basically, erm..." "Everything is ruled out that I've seen so far." "Michael may be struggling to find an alternative method, but there are scientists who have long known how to kill humanely." "Procedures for the euthanasia of lab animals are rigorously researched." "Dr Bonnie Beaver co-authored America's most significant report on the subject." "Euthanasia is something that we deal with every day." "For example, if it's very important to look at brain tissue in a particular study, we can't obviously then do some kind of euthanasia procedure that's going to damage that tissue." "So we have to look for different options." "One of the options Dr Beaver identified is, in certain animals, entirely painless." "It's known as hypoxia." "Hypoxia is depriving the brain and other vital structures of oxygen, and of course, oxygen is needed to support life." "But if you're depriving the body of the stuff of life, of air, of oxygen, how can that not be stressful?" "You could interfere with the blood's ability to carry oxygen to different parts of the body." "But how could that happen, Doctor?" "I've looked at...cyanide gas in human beings..." "OK...and it causes immense distress." "How could what you say...?" "OK, there are a lot of ways that can be used for hypoxia that are not painful, so there are other alternatives beside cyanide." "So it is possible to create hypoxia without causing distress?" "That's correct." "If it's possible to deprive animals of oxygen in a painless way, then perhaps the same can be done with humans." "At the Royal Netherlands Air Force Physiology Centre, there's a small group of scientists who routinely take human subjects to the brink of death using hypoxia." "Dr Ted Meeuwsen trains pilots to survive the constant threat of this deadly condition when making extreme manoeuvres." "To experience hypoxia for himself," "Michael is going into a human centrifuge." "There his body will be subjected to a massive increase in the force of gravity, known as G force." "My God, Ted, am I going in that thing there?" "Well, actually, you are." "It's like an enormous spanner with a coffin at one end, isn't it?" "So you're going to spin me round in this." "And the blood is...what, going to go to my feet?" "Exactly, because the G forces react on the body, you become heavier, and also the inside of the body becomes heavier, also the blood becomes heavier." "The blood becomes heavier?" "Yeah, and in the blood there is the oxygen, right?" "Sure." "So you don't have enough oxygen then in the head." "So I would..." "I would pass out and then... then I would pass away, yeah?" "Yeah." "OK." "And you're going to monitor everything that happens to me?" "Exactly, and my flight surgeon, who is also present, will monitor you all the way." "Do you want to see it?" "No." "I will show you." "All right." "HE SPEAKS DUTCH" "LOUD WHIRRING" "There it is, nine Gs." "So your body becomes nine times more heavier." "That's simply dreadful." "When Michael begins to feel hypoxic, he will lose his peripheral vision." "OK, you can step into the gondola." "Right, OK." "Then, seconds away from unconsciousness, everything he sees will turn grey." "Oh, that is, er..." "that is very nasty now." "I've got my safety limits, the door's closed, the operator is ready, and the doctor is also ready." "So if you're ready, you may push the go and keep it there." "Here goes, I'm pressing it." "All righty." "Two, one, and there's your onset." "Describe to us what you are feeling right now." "I'm now feeling a lot of pressure in my body," "I can feel the blood rushing down." "Can you reach your nose with your hand?" "Oh, my goodness, my hand weighs a ton, I can just about do that." "That's very, very tough, the horizon's gone completely, and my arm is being pressed down again now." "I feel very heavy, and I can't keep my head straight." "Oh, my head is going." "My legs weigh so much." "How is your vision?" "My vision is still fine, I can see... but my eyes are getting very heavy." "My vision's still fine, I can see..." "I can see peripheral, but it's getting very, very tough." "If Michael continues to spin for another 60 seconds, the gravity-induced hypoxia will kill him." "Oh, my head is very heavy!" "Oh, now my peripheral's going, I'm going grey, going grey!" "OK, you may shoot the target now." "I'm squeezing..." "Squeeze the muscles, squeeze the muscles." "And I'm very, very grey now, I'm tipping forward very, very badly." "Stare at the horizon." "I need to press those muscles, I'm forgetting to press those muscles," "I'm staring at the horizon." "Wow!" "That..." "That was extraordinary." "My legs felt so incredibly heavy, and my arms were really heavy, I could..." "When I was asked to do that, I could hardly move this arm." "You nearly blacked out." "Yeah?" "How much longer?" "Seconds." "Yeah." "Really." "Five, eight seconds." "I was on the point of blacking out." "I would then have become unconscious." "If you'd kept it going, I would be dead." "Exactly." "The centrifuge may be the most effective way of training pilots to survive hypoxia in flight manoeuvres, but it's as far from a perfect killing method as one can get." "However, within this institute, there is a device that could prove to be a viable solution to Michael's quest." "You need to put a mask on your face and hold it like this." "This is an altitude chamber." "It simulates the low oxygen concentration you get at high altitude and provokes a entirely different form of hypoxia." "In the human centrifuge, Michael had the blood pushed from his brain to his feet." "In the altitude chamber, there will be plenty of blood in his brain but hardly any oxygen in his blood." "Michael, how are you feeling?" "A little tense." "A little tense." "I will ask you to remove the mask at 8,000 or 9,000 feet and then you will experience a rapid decompression." "This is a risky experiment, as unconsciousness can occur quite suddenly." "That was a sudden change." "That's what we call a rapid decompression." "Just recover." "Please, we talk, and tell me what you're experiencing." "A little bit giddy." "Yeah, a little bit light headed." "Physiologist Dr Hans Wittenberg is monitoring Michael's condition by asking him to complete basic tasks." "Can you show me by sticking up your fingers how much nine minus five is?" "Nine minus five would be four." "Excellent, what card is this?" "That's the eight of clubs." "Excellent." "Yeah." "Michael's brain is suffering from oxygen starvation, making him feel drunk, euphoric and over-confident." "Can you hold this up for me?" "I can hold it up, yeah." "And can you put the shape in it as well?" "All right, I'm looking for..." "I'm looking for..." "Mm-hmm." "I can't see...that one." "It's here." "Is it?" "Ah..." "Put it in." "OK." "Excellent." "What kind of card is this?" "It's the three of diamonds." "Three of diamonds?" "Yeah." "I've got another shape for you, can you put it in?" "Yes, it's the star." "Yes." "Michael will eventually face an ultimate test." "Will he be able to switch his oxygen back on and save his life?" "Or will he be too far gone to care?" "How much is eight minus three?" "Eight minus three is four." "Is it four?" "Eight minus three..." "SLURRING:" "No, eight minus three is..." "Michael is dangerously hypoxic." "OK, I think it's time to recover, Michael." "Can you put up the switches?" "Put up the switches or you will die." "Just swing the mask back on." "He's experiencing what appears to be the perfect method of execution, and he doesn't care." "Put up the switches or you will die." "Put up the switches." "GARBLED RADIO TRANSMISSION" "Can you tell me how you feel now?" "Yeah." "How do you feel?" "I feel much better." "Very good." "How much is eight minus three?" "Five, definitely, five." "Thank you." "Yeah, yeah." "OK..." "Good." "OK, Hans, thank you." "Michael?" "Where are we now, Captain?" "Well, actually you are descending now to sea level again, we are at 26,000 feet." "How much longer until I'd have been unconscious?" "A matter of seconds." "Really?" "I guess ten to 20 seconds and then..." "And from there to death?" "That's your final destination, then." "If Hans hadn't stepped in..." "He saved your life today." "You're kidding." "Be very thankful." "Thank you, Hans!" "But overall, Michael, was it painful?" "No!" "I thought the experiment was a failure, because" "I was getting all the answers right." "Did I get all the answers right?" "In the end, no." "Really?" "Yes." "I thought I was doing really well." "Yeah!" "I thought I'd outwitted you." "THEY LAUGH" "Well, I certainly felt self-confident, obviously I did, but that's evidently one of the symptoms of hypoxia." "And I had no idea that I was near death." "I was just..." "Yeah, I was very happy, very happy." "Hell of a way to go." "Hell of a way to go." "Hypoxia seems to be the perfect way to die." "But Michael now faces a different problem - how to implement his chosen method." "I think hypoxia is the solution." "What I haven't thought about are the practicalities, because you can't build an expensive altitude chamber in place of every death chamber." "There's got to be a simpler way." "There is one British scientist who has been developing a humane method of killing based on the euphoric effects of the altitude chamber." "Dr Mohan Raj from Bristol University has been researching hypoxia as a way to kill farm animals in slaughterhouses, but instead of using a multi-million pound machine, he's using a painless gas." "You've been using hypoxia humanely to kill farm animals." "How are you doing that?" "We're using argon and nitrogen." "You're using a gas?" "Yes." "And that produces the same sort of hypoxia as I experienced?" "That's correct, principally they deprive the brain of oxygen." "And how have you been doing that?" "We wanted to choose the gas mixture that is animal-welfare friendly." "The best way of deciding that is to ask the pigs if they were given a free choice to choose one or the other gas, what they call preference testing." "Doctor Raj conducted an experiment in which pigs were offered apples in a chamber filled with different hypoxia-inducing gases." "First, he used carbon dioxide, a toxic gas that irritates the body." "they will not feed in that atmosphere." "Then he used inert gases such as nitrogen and argon." "Unlike carbon dioxide and the poison used in the gas chamber, inert gasses have no detectable smell, taste or physical sensation." "So the body has no way of knowing that the oxygen in the air has been entirely replaced by another gas." "The painless effect is confirmed by what the pig did next." "They woke up and just looked around and went back to feed again on the apples, and that indicated to us that it is a stress-free induction of unconsciousness." "And can I see this equipment?" "Of course you can." "So simple!" "It is." "We have a source of nitrogen here." "Yeah." "Taken through this tube, and the gas is delivered using the face mask to pigs restrained in this hammock." "And would you be able to change this mask to a human mask and apply it to me?" "Yes, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it." "Why?" "Because if you're inhaling pure nitrogen, you will be unconscious within 15 seconds." "15 seconds, really?" "That's right." "And how long to death?" "Within a minute." "Really?" "Yes." "That's astonishing." "So this really is the perfect killing machine." "That appears to be the case, yes." "'So it turns out that a canister of gas, a tube and a mask 'can be the perfect killing machine." "It's as simple as that.'" "The method is cheap, it's viable, it's infallible." "Not only is it painless, but the person dies with euphoria, and so science does provide the answer to how you can have a humane method of execution." "ON RADIO: 'The people who are on death row now 'are going to die in prison, no question." "'Jones also points out that even if a former inmate...'" "With the solution in mind, Michael has returned to America, where the debate over the humanity of the death penalty still rages." "'My interest in this isn't just scientific - it's practical, too." "'I want to know what people think of this alternative method." "'I know that most people who are against the death penalty won't buy it, 'because for them whatever the method, state execution is murder." "'But most Americans are in favour of the death penalty, 'and I need to ask those people 'whether they'll go for nitrogen in place of the lethal injection.'" "There's one man who's uniquely placed to comment." "The leading voice of the pro-death penalty movement in America," "Professor Robert Blecker, is an expert on the government's policy on the subject." "Professor, after some investigation, I think I've come up with a perfect killing device, an entirely humane way of killing a prisoner who's under sentence of death." "It's nitrogen, which renders him first euphoric and then makes him unconscious pretty quickly, and he dies entirely without pain." "What do you think of that?" "I think it's terrible." "Terrible, why?" "If the killers who smash their victims on the side of the heads with hammers and then slit their throats go out, in your own words, on a euphoric high, that is not justice." "Was their victim's last moments euphoric?" "Will most of our last moments be euphoric?" "It's about the dignity of the state." "It's about the state not in any way emulating the terrible things that the murderers have done." "Punishment's supposed to be painful." "It's supposed to be unpleasant, that is what it is at its root." "I understand your point, I'm not sure I understand your logic." "You may have objections to what I have done, find a perfect killing method..." "It's not perfect, it's a painless..." "I think it's a perfect killing method, because...you know, absolute humanity is something that you can aspire to, and absolutely painless death." "The two are not equated." "I can achieve..." "You are again going back over and over again and insisting that humanity and painless death are equated." "They're not." "'All this time I've been using the expression, "perfect execution," "'"humane execution, painless execution,"" "'as though they're all the same thing." "'And it turns out they're not." "'What makes a method perfect is completely subjective." "'For the pro-death penalty lobby, 'using a painless method of execution 'is inhumane to the victim of the crime.'" "But I stick to my guns" " I set out to discover whether science could offer a painless way of killing people, and it does, and I think that is the right thing to be looking at." "Because for as long as the state is going to kill people," "I think it has the obligation to do it in the way that least resembles murder." "And that's what this inquiry has come up with, a painless way of executing people."