In 1989, the Florida Department of Corrections’ chief medical officer, Dr. Charles Mathews, established a correctional health ethics committee. He chaired the committee from its inception to1998. Several FBN Advisory Board members, including FBN Founder Ray Moseley of the University of Florida; FBN director Ken Goodman, University of Miami; and longtime FBN board member Davis Tornabene of Sarasota, served on the committee.
The group addressed many issues, including human subjects research, privacy, education of clinicians who care for prisoners, advance directives, treatment for erectile dysfunction in prisons, and the role of clinicians in capital punishment. The committee at one point issued a strong recommendation that, independently of the morality of killing prisoners, physicians and nurses should never participate in lethal injections or any other medically based form of capital punishment. The committee was disbanded shortly afterward.
There are no known and easily accessible records of the committee’s work. Here are copies of some artifacts:
If you have or aware of other materials, please email ethics@miami.edu.
