US Executions Threaten Supply of Anaesthetic Used For Surgical Procedures 1160
ananyo writes "Allen Nicklasson has had a temporary reprieve. Scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on 23 October, the convicted killer was given a stay of execution by the state's governor, Jay Nixon, on 11 October — but not because his guilt was in doubt. Nicklasson will live a while longer because one of the drugs that was supposed to be used in his execution — a widely used anesthetic called propofol — is at the center of an international controversy that threatens millions of U.S. patients, and affects the way that U.S. states execute inmates. Propofol, used up to 50 million times a year in U.S. surgical procedures, has never been used in an execution. If the execution had gone ahead, U.S. hospitals could have lost access to the drug because 90% of the U.S. supply is made and exported by a German company subject to European Union regulations that restrict the export of medicines and devices that could be used for capital punishment or torture. This is not the first time that the E.U.'s anti-death-penalty stance has affected the U.S. supply of anesthetics. Since 2011, a popular sedative called sodium thiopental has been unavailable in the United States. 'The European Union is serious,' says David Lubarsky, head of the anesthesiology department at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. 'They've already shown that with thiopental. If we go down this road with propofol, a lot of good people who need anesthesia are going to be harmed.'"
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
Firing squads are effective too.
For child killers, burning works for me.
Re:lethal injection is for sissies (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a country/state that is very proud of (1) their inalienable right to own and wear guns, and (2) insists on killing people found guilty in a very imperfect process, should have the guts to just shoot those people. Executions aren't supposed to be nice, so just get over the squeamishness and just shoot the buggers.
The especially weird thing is that a lot of the same people who are big on capital punishment and packing heat also will be the first to bitch about "big government" interfering in their lives with their taxes, healthcare and other "nanny state" regulations. Seems that deliberately, intentionally killing citizens is the most serious form of government intrusion in one's life -- not something to trust to the incompetent, liberal, meddling "gubmint". You know, the terrifying phrase: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
Re:Why can't we make it here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I found an informative article [nbcnews.com]. Summary: It says that essentially the US firm Hospira is unable to proceed due to the FDA not authorizing changes in the manufacturing process. Teva, an Israeli company, exited the business after what sounds like a combination of manufacturing issues and a large number of spurious lawsuits over a hepatitis C outbreak. The drug itself is extremely hard to manufacture, and profits are nearly non-existent so there's little incentive for competitors to enter the market.
Possibly the issue would be resolved if the FDA were to change the regulations, but again, no information on what exactly the problem is were reported.
Re:Hint (Score:4, Interesting)
No, "barbaric" is the way we treat people with mental illness and ailments that point to it. Rather than fix the problem, it's easier to take a puritanical view and pretend it's that individual's personal failings that caused the problem instead of society's failing to treat it. When this inevitably results in recidivism, it's just easier for society to hit the guy with a brick and make the problem go away.
We make the monsters and then claim that the monsters have to be killed because they can't be unmade.
Re:Hint (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hangings (Score:2, Interesting)
It varies, but mostly they load all the weapons with live ammo except one. That way you have the highest chance of a successful execution and the guys shooting still haven't got a clue if they had live or blank ammo.
Re:As good a time as any (Score:5, Interesting)
America is fundamentally punitive and violent. Same reason gun massacres every couple weeks make no impact, the highest proportion of people in prison for any country in the world makes no impact, military expenditures equal to the rest of the world combined makes no impact. Perhaps all empires come to be like that.
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hangings (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway I don't see why it should even matter. If someone can be designated to push a button to electrocute someone, or gas them, or to release a trap door, or to administer a lethal injection then I don't see what difference it makes that the switch actually is rigged to a weapon that fires a bullet into someone's heart.
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't see any advantage on using chemicals to kill a person, instead of a bullet shot into the head
Less messy, plus chemicals appear more humane. From the perspective of all but the condemned, it looks like they are just going to sleep.
Personally, I'm wondering why they've never tried nitrogen asphyxiation. It gives the same appearance as lethal injection, with the added benefits of being safer to handle and dispose of, and it is actually humane, since the whole "need to breathe" feeling comes about from a build up of CO2, not a lack of O2. If I were a religious person, I'd even go so far as to suggest that nitrogen asphyxiation is God's preferred method of execution. Why else design us with what appears to be such a serious flaw?
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
For what appear to be PR reasons, execution methods that are gory looking and freak out the viewers have been largely phased out (a firing squad, say, or a guillotine, will kill you pretty dead, pretty fast; but it'll leave a heck of a mess, and the more competently it's done, the bigger the mess.
The replacements, by contrast, seem to have been picked more for the appearance of cleanliness, rather than actual swiftness or painlessness (I suspect that the 'brain drain' of medical expertise and moderates in general toward the anti-death-penalty camp, combined with the fact that the "I wish we could make them suffer longer! Unfortunately that isn't constitutional..." camp isn't going anywhere, has lead to expertise being harder to come by, and stakeholder interest in pain-minimization simply being less). If the family dog gets sick, pretty much any vet in the country can euthanize them to a standard of humaneness that people demand for a beloved pet. Execution by lethal injection? Odds are surprisingly bad that the prison-flunky doing the job will even be able to find a vein, and the percentage of kills that actually go quickly and cleanly is unimpressive. Why the difference? Similarly, occupational safety/industrial hygiene types can tell you all about how people can suffocate without even noticing because of carbon monoxide exposure, or oxygen-displacing gas leaks (quirk of human physiology: you can detect high levels of CO2, or mechanical impediments to breathing, and you'll freak out; but you can't detect lack of oxygen, so if carbon monoxide binds all your hemoglobin, or you are working in an ill-ventilated basement and end up breathing pure nitrogen because of an LN2 leak nearby, your CO2 levels will remain in the green, and you'll just black out and die...); but we still can't gas people to death properly... Unless the pro-execution camp can get its technique together, I'd stick with old reliable myself, if I had to choose.
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment. There's ways you can relieve the burden on society, too.
Life imprisonment is harsher on anyone who who has to come into contact with lifers. A lifer has no incentive to behave in a reasonable way. If someone says the wrong word a lifer may kill them. The lifer is already subject to the harshest penalty possible. What are they going to do? Throw the lifer in jail?
I lifer is a danger to every guard and inmate they come into contact with. The number of guards and other inmates killed by lifers far outweigh the few innocent suspects killed by the system.
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a US-centric site. Welcome to the reality.
Re:Hangings (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a BBC program, 'How To Kill A Human Being,' that examined various methods of execution. The presenter concluded that nitrogen was the ideal way. The idea was presented to the director of a pro-death-penalty campaign group, but he rejected it on the grounds that it was 'inhumane to the victim,' because a pleasant death did not satisfy the demands of justice.