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| Death Penalty Drugs Teach Us About Scientific Progress and the Free Market |
| By inverse.com- Yasmin Tayag |
| Published: 11/05/2015 |
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In October, confusion about lethal injection drugs bought Richard Glossip 37 more days to live. The accused murderer’s execution was postponed on day-of, just hours after Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections discovered it had received the wrong chemical. The mix-up was the latest complication in the long, tortured, intravenous trip of death penalty drugs. As pharmaceutical companies increasingly refuse to sell them, scarcity reigns despite demand. Dut drug suppliers are getting out of the death game. In 2011, the pharmaceutical company Hospira announced it was ceasing production of the drug sodium thiopental, a commonly used anesthetic used to knock out condemned inmates before administration of lethal drugs, after months of pressure from activists protesting the death penalty. Though the company was the country’s only manufacturer of sodium thiopental, ending production was a wise PR move and didn’t hurt much, at least financially. Sales of the anesthetic only made up 0.25 percent of Hospira’s total drug revenue. Supply usually rises to meet demand, but, so far, enterprising drugmakers haven’t swooped in to meet executioner’s needs, at least not in the U.S. Not that this is surprising: Doing so presents P.R. challenges and, as Hospira’s president pointed out, invites lawsuits against both the facility and its employees. In some states, officials have attempted to buy sodium thiopental from overseas manufacturers only to be thwarted by the FDA, which refuses to approve the drugs. Others have had to make do with what was available. Read More. |
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