California refuses to return execution drug to FDA

[alp227]

Source: SF Chronicle

California prison officials are defying a U.S. Food and Drug Administration order to return supplies of a foreign-made drug used in executions, saying they disagree with a federal judge's ruling that the drug was imported illegally without an FDA safety review.

The FDA, which also disagreed with the judge and argued that no such review is required, said Friday that it will appeal the ruling.

The dispute adds further uncertainty to the resumption of executions in California, blocked since 2006 by an order by another federal judge who found numerous flaws in the state's procedures for lethal injections.

The drug, sodium thiopental, is an anesthetic used by California and most other states to render a prisoner unconscious at the start of the execution process. After the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped production in 2009, California and several other states got new supplies from a British distributor of Austrian-made sodium thiopental.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/25/BA7N1ONQ81.DTL

[longship]

1. Unsafe drugs used to execute people

Boggles the mind. What the fuck is wrong with people? From any perspective this is fucked up.

[RufusTFirefly]

2. So glad they've got their priorities straight

Ain't gonna let those Feds stop 'em from killing people. No sir!

[EFerrari]

6. I think the prison lobby is one of, if not the, most powerful one in the state. n/t

[RufusTFirefly]

7. I believe you are correct. n/t

[siligut]

3. Sodium Pentothal is truth serum

Though these days, Sodium Amytal is the drug of choice. The article says they use it to sedate people before execution. I have to wonder. This from the article, makes no sense: He said the agency was violating the law and appeared to be demonstrating a "callous indifference to the health consequences of those imminently facing the executioner's needle."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/25/BA7N1ONQ81.DTL#ixzz1vwGBQau0

[kestrel91316]

5. "....health consequences of those imminently facing the executioner's needle....."

Yeah. Might cause serious problems, like anaphylaxis or muscle aches or liver failure. In the deceased.

[christx30]

9. I think you're being callosed

You dont want to have to deal with dialisys in addition to the normal problems associated with being dead, like decomp, 6 feet of earth above your face, and in extreme cases, zombism.

[kestrel91316]

10. "callous"

[LeftyMom]

4. So are they going to send the DEA? Or is that just for weed shops?

[TeeYiYi]

8. Made me laugh! ...nt

TYY

[SemperEadem]

11. sanitizing capital punishment

Seems to me this drug is used to prevent those killing the convict from witnessing the gruesomeness involved in their state's particular method of dispatching the soul of a human from its body--if the state is going to be in the business of doing that, then why should they be shielded from the horror of what they're doing? Confinement for life cures having to witness that. Capital punishment should not be sanitized to protect those who believe in it and want to see it carried out. They should have to have that burned into their psyche for the rest of their days if they're for the death penalty. There should be some price for that.