Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

A Danish producer of pentobarbital, an animal euthanasia drug that prisons in the United States have recently started using in lethal injections, has said it would henceforth stop its product from reaching executioners.

Lundbeck, which came under enormous pressure from campaign groups and investors last year after a slew of U.S. correctional facilities switched to its barbiturate, said on Friday, “Going forward, Nembutal [the commercial name for pentobarbital] will be supplied exclusively through a specialty pharmacy drop ship program that will deny distribution of the product to prisons in U.S. states currently active in carrying out the death penalty by lethal injection.”

The company added that it had notified its distributors of the plan in late June and under its new distribution programme hospitals and treatment centres would continue to have access to Nembutal for therapeutic purposes but it would “review all Nembutal orders before providing clearance for shipping the product and deny orders from prisons located in States currently active in carrying out death penalty sentences.”

This development is a serious setback to U.S. correctional facilities, many of which switched to the pentobarbital after the drug earlier used became scarce in the country. The supply of that drug, sodium thiopental, dried up after the sole company producing it, Hospira, announced last year that it would halt production owing to raw materials concerns.

This week Maya Foa of a United Kingdom-based anti-death-penalty campaign group Reprieve however welcomed the steps taken by Lundbeck, which she said showed that it was possible to take action to stop the supply of drugs for use in executions. “Other pharmaceutical companies should now follow Lundbeck’s example... We also need to see action from the European Commission to block the export of execution drugs from the EU to the U.S.,” she said.

The action by Lundbeck followed from Reprieve and other groups pressing the company to commit to a concrete strategy to prevent U.S. prisons from diverting their product from legitimate medical use toward executions.

Spelling out some of the details on the proposed distribution changes, Lundbeck said that prior to receiving Nembutal, it would require the purchaser to sign a form stating that the purchase of Nembutal was for its own use and that it would not redistribute any purchased product without express written authorisation from Lundbeck. “By signing the form, the purchaser agrees that the product will not be made available for use in capital punishment,” the company said.

"Lundbeck adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment... While the company has never sold the product directly to prisons and therefore cannot make guarantees, we are confident that our new distribution program will play a substantial role in restricting prisons' access to Nembutal for misuse as part of lethal injection,” said Ulf Wiinberg, Chief Executive Officer of Lundbeck, in a statement.

However the company reiterated that its pentobarbital met “important medical need” and it had chosen not to withdraw the product from the market because “the product continues to meet an important medical need in the U.S. Nembutal is used to treat serious conditions such as a severe and life threatening emergency epilepsy.”

From The Hindu

Despite evidence of agonising deaths caused, and in possible violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, numerous prisons in the United States have continued to use an untested drug, pentobarbital, in their lethal injection cocktail for executions.

Most recently the state of Georgia used the animal euthanasia barbiturate to put to death Roy Blankenship (55) who, according to leading U.S. anaesthesiologist David Waisel, “was inadequately anesthetized and was conscious for approximately the first three minutes of the execution and that he suffered greatly.”

Dr. Waisel in particular cited eyewitness accounts stating that Mr. Blankenship’s eyes “were open throughout,” and he added that that should not have occurred after the injection of the anaesthetic component of the lethal injection.

Mr. Blankenship, who was executed on June 23, was the first inmate in Georgia who was killed with pentobarbital, also known as Nembutal. Many U.S. states have switched to the drug, commonly used to put to dogs, after the drug earlier used, sodium thiopental, became scarce in the country.

The supply of sodium thiopental dried up after the sole company producing it, Hospira, announced last year that it would halt production owing to raw materials concerns. Following this development numerous correctional facilities attempted to obtain sodium thiopental from other countries such as India and the United Kingdom.

However since none of the imported sodium thiopental has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized some the UK-made drug from prisons in Kentucky and Tennessee earlier this year.

Yet in January an Indian generic drug company, Kayem Pharma of Mumbai, however managed to export enough sodium thiopental to kill 166 men, to the Nebraska Department of Corrections. South Dakota is also believed to possess the Indian-made drug and it is unclear whether these supplies may also be seized by federal authorities.

With such concerns mounting, however, the list of states turning to pentobarbital, which has been approved by the FDA – though not for use in executions – is growing daily. This trend has intensified despite experts such as Dr. Waisel warning that “the use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anaesthesia has no clinical history... [and] puts the inmate at risk for serious undue pain and suffering.”

Dr. Waisel’s words would appear to now be grimly prophetic as accounts of botched executions are beginning to trickle in ever more rapidly. In Alabama the execution of Eddie Duval Powell on June 16 “show that his behaviour during the process was similar to that of Mr Blankenship, including the jerking of the head and expressions of apparent surprise and discomfort,” according to a statement by Reprieve, a UK-based anti-death penalty campaign group.

Media eyewitness accounts of Mr. Powell’s death said that “Seemingly confused and startled, he jerked his head to one side and began breathing heavily, his chest rose and contracted. The execution cocktail drugs had begun to be administered.”

Commenting on the use of pentobarbital in U.S. executions Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said, “The new drug protocol was rushed through against the advice of medical professionals, and in many States, against the law. The growing evidence that the protocol doesn’t work, and that prisoners are experiencing extraordinary pain and suffering as a result, makes one seriously wonder about the... justice of the U.S. capital punishment system.”

In the state of Texas, which executes more prisoners than any other U.S. state, the question of cruel and unusual punishment from the use of pentobarbital was compounded by the fact the drug was recently administered to two inmates who were, according to experts “mentally deficient.”

Milton Mathis (32) was said to have an IQ of 62, and Gayland Bradford (42) an IQ of 68, yet Mr. Mathis was executed on June 21 and Mr. Bradford on June 1.

After the Danish company producing pentobarbital for the U.S., Lundbeck, came under enormous pressure from campaign groups and investors to stop allowing its products to be used in executions, it said that it would look into how it could achieve that. However it is yet to commit to a course of action to prevent its pentobarbital from reaching U.S. executioners.