https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/policing-can-take-a-lesson-from-health-care/ > The grief is indescribable. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black Americans dying at the hands of police is unacceptable. It is happening repeatedly, and we are fed up. > I will be forever haunted by the images of a police officer’s knee being used, not in protest, but to asphyxiate a fellow American. While I had to watch parts of it on mute to keep from hearing the calls of Mr. Floyd asking for water, begging for his deceased mother and pleading for his life over and over again, I keep thinking of the details of how he died—how his carotid arteries were compressed, leaving it impossible for his brain to get oxygen; how the vagal, or relaxation, centers in his neck were overstimulated by the pressure, likely slowing or stopping his heart; how his trachea, as rigid and firm as it is, may have also been collapsing from all the external pressure; and how pinning him down kept him from expanding his chest cavity to take in enough air and compensate for his already oxygen-deprived organs.