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Thread: Anesthesia Shortage

  1. #271
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Richard86, the various state departments of correction can only use legally-obtained drugs.

    The only FDA-certified manufacturer of pentobarbital is in Europe, and the EU prohibits its use in executions. Oddly, though, it's perfectly okay with the EU to use it in assisted suicides. Shipment from any other source outside the U.S. is illegal, and shipments would be subject to immediate seizure by the FDA.

    The FDA's reach also extends to drugs compounded in another state. Compounding pharmacies, unless they obtain a waiver on a case-by-case basis, are prohibited from shipping across state lines. The FDA permits this in only a very few instances every year, and only in the case of certain drugs and treatments only made in a single or a few compounding pharmacies. It certainly would not permit interstate shipment of pentobarbital, since the stuff is so easy and cheap to compound. So each state is on its own for obtaining execution drugs.

    FWIW, a Texas-sized lethal dose of pentobarbital is freely available in Mexico for 45.00. But it ain't legal, so the Texas DoC can't use it. Sigh.

  2. #272
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    However, if the current President weren't decidely lukewarm on the death penalty, couldn't the FDA conceivably be encouraged to certify pentobarbital from China for the express purpose of carrying out executions? With a President less squeamish about capital punishment, couldn't the FDA also readily grant waivers as a matter of course so that states could use out-of-state compounding pharmacies?

  3. #273
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Obama has said he supports the death penalty but only for the worst of the worst. I heard him publicly say once how 9/11 Co conspirators should get death. He obviously knows Nidal Hassan got death and the Boston Marathon bomber is facing death.

    Hillary Clinton ' s support for the death penalty is even stronger.

  4. #274
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moh View Post
    However, if the current President weren't decidely lukewarm on the death penalty, couldn't the FDA conceivably be encouraged to certify pentobarbital from China for the express purpose of carrying out executions? With a President less squeamish about capital punishment, couldn't the FDA also readily grant waivers as a matter of course so that states could use out-of-state compounding pharmacies?
    That's what I was thinking, surely it's possible to amend FDA regulations to allow import of lethal injection drugs from a new supplier in light of the current supply problems? Also certifying a specific supplier for the drugs would resolve legal challenges regarding the quality of the drugs.

    This is what I don't like about lefties, when they lose the debate (i.e. capital punishment enjoys public support and has been upheld by the courts) they agitate, sometimes violently, to make the current system unworkable by forcing suppliers to withdraw. They do the same with animal testing as well. Then they claim that the system has broken.

  5. #275
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Where there's a will there's a way and I'm afraid that President Obama hasn't got the aforementioned will. He tepidly voiced support for the death penalty back in 2008 just to get elected it would seem and since then has done absolutely nothing to show that he actually actively supports its implementation. For instance, he hasn't signed off on the execution of military death-row inmate Dwight Loving, whose appeals have otherwise been exhausted, even though the President's had more than five years to do so. Similarly, his administration's openly abolitionist Attorney General has done zilch to end the federal lethal-injection morass: litigation is still stuck at the district court level and, what's more, the feds still haven't come up with a new lethal-injection protocol after more than five years of apparently doing absolutely nothing to create one.

    Moreover, the President and his underlings have not done anything to ameliorate the lethal-injection drug supply problems states have faced. Not only could the FDA ease up on the states but I don't think it's hard to imagine that the federal government could find the resources somewhere to manufacture its own lethal drugs. Instead, his sole recent public pronouncements on the subject have been that Oklahoma needs to be federally investigated for their less-than-smooth execution of Clayton Lockett and that he buys into the notion that there are racial shortcomings in the application of capital punishment. In short, the President is clearly not a huge fan of the death penalty.

  6. #276
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    I agree the Feds could have done more but I did hear Atty General Holder say the 9/11 conspirators should be tried and executed so he is not an abolitionist.

  7. #277
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Furthermore, even if Obama were ardently in favor of capital punishment, you've still got the foot-dragging liberal bureaucrats of the FDA to contend with. This is truly an agency run amok:

    1. In real life, one of the things I do is invest in startup biotech companies. One in which I have a small position is Titan Pharmaceuticals. Titan has an excellent, implantable treatment for opioid addiction. It's been proven in phase III trials to be superior to standard-of-care and, unlike standard-of-care, it's impossible to cheat out the drugs and sell them on the street. But the FDA has this "quit or die" attitude toward addictions of all sorts, and to almost everyone's surprise — though not mine — the FDA rejected it. The smart money is that this treatment hasn't a chance of getting through the FDA until 2017 or later. It's sad: if Phillip Seymour Hoffman had been on Probuphine treatment for his addiction, he certainly wouldn't have overdosed on heroin. There have been a bunch of other inexplicable FDA rejections with other, unrelated drugs or treatments during the course of this administration. It's also reached the point that, it seems, if your biotech isn't big enough to make massive donations to Democrat campaign coffers, your drug or treatment won't get approved.

    2. Another matter with which I'm concerned is e-cigarettes. For those who don't know, these constitute nicotine replacement therapy via nicotine enmisced in propylene glycol and/or glycerine with optional flavorings. By a lot of research done worldwide, these are effective in getting intractibly addicted smokers to quit smoking, they have not served as a gateway to cigarette addiction, they are at least 99 percent less dangerous to vapers [people who puff on these devices] than cigarettes, and have zero second-hand health effects. But the FDA is in the process of regulating these out of existence, all except those inferior products manufactured by Big Tobacco. Aside from denying the intractibly nicotine addicted [about 16-20 percent of the population carries a genetic quirk which makes nicotine irresistably addictive, which is why the smoking rate has remained steady for decades] the health benefits of quitting cigarettes, and thus condemning to needless illness and premature death, there's the question of taxes. Nobody can figure out how to tax these devices or supplies for them. And, if all smokers switched to vaping, the federal, state and local governments wouldn't be able to collect close to half a trillion dollars of taxes per year. And the head of the Tobacco Division at the FDA was a highly paid lobbyist for Johnson and Johnson [maker of gums, patches and inhalers] and Pfizer [maker of the FDA-approved Chantix quit-smoking drug, which reserves a quarter of a billion dollars each year to deal with all the lawsuits -- it doesn't work, and it results in many suicides, assaults and murders each year].

    It's a sad state of affairs . . .
    Last edited by mostlyclassics; 09-12-2014 at 10:28 AM.

  8. #278
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    Interesting post mostlyclassics. I'm a research scientist myself in biochemistry, although what I work on is many years away from clinical trials, let alone approval, if indeed it has any clinical applications.

    I know what you mean about e-cigarettes, the EU is trying to do exactly the same, as is the WHO! Some months ago there was a very interesting piece in The Times arguing that the fact that tobacco firms are starting to buy up e-cigarette firms indicates that the flow of customers is away from tobacco onto e-cigarettes and not vice versa, similar to how Kodak has struggled with the rise of digital photography.

    I don't want to drift off topic too much, but have you read Ben Goldacre's book Bad Pharma? It's a very interesting look at drug development and regulation.

  9. #279
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    Drug Maker Mylan Takes $70 Million Hit in Battle Over Lethal Injection

    Alabama's plan to use a new drug to execute death-row prisoners is causing headaches for the pharmaceutical company that makes the chemical.

    An anti-death penalty organization convinced a German financial firm to pull a $70 million investment in Mylan, the manufacturer of rocuronium bromide, a paralytic that is part of the state's untested three-drug lethal injection.

    Jens Erhardt, managing director of asset manager DJE Kapital, told NBC News that his firm sold all its Mylan shares about a month ago because the drug giant would not guarantee its products won't wind up in executioners' syringes.

    "We don't want to support this," Erhardt said. "If clients find out we have shares in companies that supply that drug, we have problems with our clients."

    DJE was tipped off to the situation by Reprieve, a London-based activist group pushing Mylan to take steps to prevent rocuronium bromide from being used to kill inmates.

    Under pressure, other pharmaceutical companies have barred their distributors from selling medicine to correction departments — causing shortages that have left death-penalty states scrambling for new sources and new drug combinations.

    But Reprieve said Mylan, the Pennsylvania-based pharmaceutical company that is one of the biggest generic drug makers, has refused to go that far.

    "There are simple and effective steps pharmaceutical companies can take to protect their medicines from being sold for use in lethal injections, and over a dozen companies — the vast majority of affected companies — have taken exactly these steps," said Maya Foa, head of Reprieve's death penalty team.

    "To date, Mylan has not taken steps to protect its medicines from being sold for use in executions, and this is a matter of concern to responsible investors."

    A spokeswoman for Mylan declined to say whether Alabama had obtained its product for upcoming executions and refused to answer questions beyond a written statement:

    “Mylan is committed to setting new standards in healthcare and providing access to affordable medicines for the world’s 7 billion people. We are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of quality and integrity in everything we do. We only distribute our products through legally compliant channels, intended for prescription by healthcare providers consistent with approved labeling or applicable standard(s) of care.”

    Alabama adopted a new three-drug combination last month after it ran out of pentobarbital — its previous lethal-injection agent — because the manufacturers have banned it from executions.

    The new protocol includes the sedative midazolam hydrochloride, rocuronium bromide to arrest breathing, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. No other state has used the exact combination, though Florida's protocol is very similar.

    The campaign to dry up supplies of rocuronium bromide, which was first reported by the Financial Times, comes as states struggle to obtain drugs for lethal injections and cope with the fallout from a trio of botched or troubled executions.

    The common drug in those three cases was midazolam, which some experts say is not a strong enough anesthetic to stop an inmate from experiencing a harrowing death. Reprieve and other execution opponents charge that rocuronium bromide and other paralytics mask a prisoner's pain and distress.

    Alabama has asked a court to set execution dates for nine inmates, but correction officials have not said whether they have an adequate supply of drugs for those or where they obtained the chemicals. The state attorney general declined to comment.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/let...lethal-n230051
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  10. #280
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    I wish the willfully ignorant and ideologically hagridden mainstream media would get their facts straight!

    An anti-death penalty organization convinced a German financial firm to pull a $70 million investment in Mylan, the manufacturer of rocuronium bromide, a paralytic that is part of the state's untested three-drug lethal injection.
    DJE Kapital had no direct investment in Mylan. DJE Kapital sold their stock in Mylan. Mylan is a publicly traded company (in addition to being on foreign stock exchanges, Mylan is listed on the U.S. NASDAQ exchange). I doubt that DJE Kapital had purchased the shares directly from Mylan, unless they participated in Mylan's initial purchase offering, and even then, DJE didn't buy the shares directly from Mylan.

    At any rate, Mylan suffered no direct hit from this stock sale. I reviewed their closing prices and found no hit to the share price from this $70,000,000 sale. And right now, Mylan shares are up about 8% from their average a month ago.

    This NBC news item makes it sound like DJE Kapital directly dug $70,000,000 out of Mylan's corporate hide.
    Last edited by mostlyclassics; 10-21-2014 at 11:53 AM.

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