Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

In the forthcoming week the United States is poised to make execution history by allowing a prison in Nebraska to use a made-in-India chemical for killing a death-row inmate. That the drug being used, unconsciousness-inducing sodium thiopental, was procured fraudulently from its manufacturer – who is “shocked and appalled” at its proposed use – is an additional twist to this saga of a growing trans-border death-trade.


Unless he is saved by a clemency petition or last-ditch legal recourse, when Michael Ryan, on death row for a double-murder in the 1980s, is strapped into a gurney and injected with lethal chemicals on March 6, he will die knowing that a drug made in the town of Kashipur, Uttarakhand in India probably caused his death.

While Ryan had earlier obtained a stay order on his execution from the Nebraska Supreme Court, that decision was reversed at the end of last week when a County District Judge, Daniel Bryan Jr., rejected his appeal. In doing so the court however did not specifically comment on Ryan’s challenge relating to how Nebraska obtained one of three lethal-injection drugs it has on hand.

Ironically the setback for Ryan will also come as a blow to the proprietors of Naari, a Swiss-Indian pharmaceutical company. Naari has argued, for more than six months now that the 485 grams of sodium thiopental now in the possession of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) were taken from it under false pretences by a middleman called Chris Harris.

The attempt of Mr. Harris to procure sodium thiopental, proved duplicitous by shipping documents and other paperwork in The Hindu’s possession, come in the wake of a similarly controversial attempt by him obtain the narcotic from a Mumbai-based firm called Kayem Pharmaceuticals.

Yet a U.K.-based anti-death penalty group called Reprieve, which had earlier tracked the NDCS’s efforts to source the drug from a shadowy firm in the United Kingdom, highlighted Mr. Harris’ interactions with Kayem and the intense pressure on the firm led to it stating publicly that it would immediately halt all exports of thiopental to the U.S.

The U.S. prison’s move to seek the drug in U.K. had also met with a storm of opposition across Europe and led to the ban of all such drug exports to the U.S. in that continent. However although the import from Kayem was not approved by U.S. regulators Mr. Harris succeeded in procuring over 500 one-gram vials of thiopental – enough to kill 166 men – for the NDCS.

According to sources, U.S. regulators have conveyed to the NDCS that they do not approve of the use of Kayem’s sodium thiopental in executions given that proper importation procedures were not followed. However Mr. Harris learned a lesson from the ban on Kayem’s drugs and would appear to have followed import guidelines for Naari’s drugs – although as in the case of Kayem the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has refused to certify the Naari drugs too.

The NDCS no doubt considers this development timely. Along with Georgia, Arizona, Texas and other U.S. states, Nebraska is said to be facing acute shortages of execution drugs since the 2010 voluntary shut-down of a firm called Hospira, the sole producer of sodium thiopental in the U.S. at the time.

Given the regulatory issues impeding the use of foreign-made sodium thiopental numerous correctional facilities in the U.S. are also considering a switch to pentobarbital, a veterinary euthanasia barbiturate used to put down dogs, or using a single-drug execution procedure.

If Nebraska does not switch to some alternative then fate of Naari’s drugs would appear to be written, despite Naari CEO Prithi Kochhar dashing off an anxious letter to Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican, in which he expressed his dismay at by the prospect that Naari’s drugs could thus be used in execution procedures. Going by a response of a judicial official, that letter has been set aside in the consideration of the Ryan case.

Regardless, Mr. Kochhar argued that Naari’s agreement with Mr. Harris was for Mr. Harris to use the vials for registration in Zambia, get the product registered there and then begin selling it there, given that sodium thiopental is used widely as an anaesthetic in the developing world.

Unfortunately the most recent decision condemning Ryan to death will lead to Naari’s drugs being used for an entirely more macabre purpose.

From The Hindu

Lundbeck, the Danish company embroiled in the controversy over the use of its products in lethal injections in the United States, has agreed to take action to restrict such use after facing intense pressure at home and abroad.

In a meeting this week with an anti-death-penalty campaign group, Reprieve, Lundbeck Chief Executive Officer Ulf Wiinberg reportedly said that the company had “reconsidered its position” and he acknowledged that “there are steps that the company could take to restrict the distribution of pentobarbital so that it is not delivered to execution chambers in the U.S., but still reaches legitimate users.”

Lundbeck is a U.S.-government-approved manufacturer of pentobarbital, a veterinary euthanasia barbiturate used to put down dogs. Pentobarbital has been used in 13 executions in the U.S. thus far, where it has replaced sodium thiopental, a more medically-tested and accepted barbiturate.

Over the course of the last one year, an increasing number of correctional facilities in the U.S. have turned to using pentobarbital – also known commercially as Nembutal – as the unconsciousness-inducing component of the lethal injection cocktail.

This trend accelerated following an announcement last summer by the main supplier of sodium thiopental in the U.S., a firm called Hospira, that it was ceasing production due to raw materials issues.

Reprieve officials said that while Lundbeck refused to make concrete assurances the company had agreed to hire “external consultants to assess the most effective strategies.”

The statement by Mr. Wiinberg came after months of intensive campaigns against Lundbeck, which also resulted in a major Danish pension fund, Unipension, selling 40 million Danish Kroner – nearly $8 million – worth of shares in the pharmaceutical company owing to concerns regarding pentobarbital use in U.S. executions.

After the meeting with Mr. Wiinberg, Reprieve said in a statement that the fierce criticism from press, politicians, non-governmental organisations and shareholders had led Lundbeck to promise that it would “be more transparent in their communications on this matter going forward... [and] that this time the full independent consultancy would be published.”

The campaign against Lundbeck’s involvement was further strengthened by the medical opinion of anaesthesia experts such as David Waisel of Harvard Medical School, who said, “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.”

Following the meeting with Lundbeck, Reprieve representative Maya Foa said, "At last we are beginning to see some positive movement from Lundbeck on this issue. But too much time has already been lost - not to mention too many lives.”

Ms. Foa said that in addition to the 13 people killed to date using Lundbeck’s drugs, another seven were set to be executed by the end of June, which is the timeframe in which Lundbeck promised to reconsider the issue.