New details of IV team’s attempts to find a vein shared by Pike’s lawyer ‘shocked and disturbed’ practitioners
Medical experts have expressed shock at the apparent incompetence shown by Tennessee’s execution team during the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, the prisoner who survived a normally fatal dose of pentobarbital, which they say would be considered medical malpractice in any other setting.
New details emerged on Thursday of how Tennessee’s intravenous (IV) team struggled for almost an hour to set up a line into Pike’s arms through which she would be administered the fatal dose of sedative. A blow-by-blow account was released in legal proceedings from Pike’s lawyer, Randy Spivey, who was present inside the death chamber at her 30 September failed execution.
The technical procedures attempted by the four unidentified members of the IV team as they tried to find a vein, as described by Spivey, provoked alarm among medical experts. They said the standards applied appeared to fall glaringly short of anything that would be deemed acceptable in a medical environment.
No need to guess, that’s exactly what happens. No ethical medical professional participates in executions.
Including the drugs that are used. Which reputable pharmaceutical company wants to be associated with producing the drugs for lethal injection?
The drugs stopped being produced in 2011. So what remains has expired at this point.
So even if we consider they have stocks, those meds will not work as intended.
Expired meds can have a lot of differences. Sometimes they are fine for years after expiration. Sometimes they become less effective. Sometimes they have wildly different effects and interactions and the medication breaks down.
Unless you actually know the shelf life of pentobarbital, that argument isn’t even worth making.
All drugs are required to have an expiration date. Drug companies will only go so far out on that time period in order to cover their asses. Plus, it’s bad for business if you’re selling meds put people could still safely use them 20 years later and don’t need to buy fresh stock. Pentobarbital could start losing potency in 5 years, or it could be shelf stable for 100.
Regardless, this wasn’t the drugs fault. A flipping 24 gauge needle. Oof. I’m just an EMT and I know that’s way too stupidly small. Not to mention all the other signs.
This is absolutely true, but i would challenge the assertion about making people throw away good meds being bad for business.
The law passed in 1979 requiring manufacturers to provide an expiration date of when they could guarantee a drug was still safe and fully effective did not require that the manufacturers do any long term tests, to establish accurate dates though. Many companies slapped a one year date on the labels and called it a day.
They could guarantee a year with then current testing protocols and if people had to toss their perfectly good meds and buy more, then that would just be good for company profits.
The US military keeps huge stockpiles of medicines on hand. Faced with throwing away millions of dollars of meds every year they commissioned a study.
Pharmaceutical companies were happy to tellpeople throw away medicines years before they needed to.