Per this article, some state and federal judges are beginning to stay executions as state stockpiles of anesthetics used in lethal injection pass their expiration dates: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/us/30drug.html
I don’t understand this - I mean, the article seems to suggest that judges believe these drugs become unuseable the instant they pass their expiration date. As I understand it, that simply isn’t so. These dates are chosen with a margin of error - often a staggeringly huge one, as in "The manufacturer has no real idea when these drugs lose potency, but is absolutely certain they’ll be good for (X) years - so that’s the expiration date).
I oppose the death penalty, and support anything that interferes with it - so this is, I suppose, all to the good. But it seems very strange that it’s expiration dates, of all things, that are hindering executions. Can any of the MD Dopers lend some insight here?
If an expired medication is given, and the prisoner doesn’t die (admittedly an unlikely scenario), who is liable? The drug company (who says right out “we have no data, it was expired, you shouldn’t use it past this date”) or the State/person/department/whatever who made the decision to use it and who now potentially have a very sick but not dead prisoner on their hands?
Drugs aren’t a time bomb…they don’t expire* on the day on the label, but sooner or later they do expire*. Using it in an execution a day later might be ok. What about a month? Six months? A year? A decade? At one point the drug won’t have the potency it should have, and sooner or later it won’t do what it needed to do. I think it’s easier to just use the manufacturer’s expiration date as a fixed rule without playing guessing games and taking chances.
(IANAD, but I was once a pharmaceutical chemist).
ETA: *when I wrote expire here, I meant degrade/become unusable/whatever. Did not mean for it to potentially be confused with the expiration date on the label.
I once had a conversation with the warden of the prison unit where executions are carried out for the state of Texas, and asked him this very question. He answered yes emphatically, saying “all proper medical procedures are followed.” I didn’t ask him why, but executions are on very rare occassions aborted when the medical technician is unable to find a vein, as was the case with Romell Broom in Ohio last year. Swabbing the arm presumably presents a subsequent infection should something like this happen, or if the phone should ring with a reprieve for whatever reason.
The safety of the person inserting the needle needs to be taken into account - if the prisoner struggles, the executioner risks being stuck by the needle, so you want it to be sterile (which is why they use sterile needles, in addition to swabbing the injection site with alcohol).
Alcohol causes veins below the surface of the skin to swell, making them easier to find.
It’s possible that the condemned could get a last-minute reprieve or stay of execution after the needle has been inserted, but before the injection process began. How much would it suck for that to happen, only to die of an infection a few days later?
I started to mention this as well; I had a nurse drawing blood from me tell me this just today, which I’d never heard before. I didn’t mention it because I wasn’t 100% sure she wasn’t jerking me around.
It is medicine 101, keep the tools clean, don’t use expired meds. You just don’t start ignoring the rules just because you are going to kill someone. I have an unloaded gun in my room. Whenever I take it out the first thing I do it check the chamber. It is a habbit, actually its a rule you must follow. It is the same thing with medical stuff. Do they use alcohol on his vein? Hell yes they do, not because they worry about infection but because it is procedure.
