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Pfizer Blocks The Use Of Its Drugs In Executions
HughPickens.com writes: Erik Eckholm reports in the NYT that the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced that it has imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections, a step that closes off the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions. "Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve," the company says, and "strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment." "With Pfizer's announcement, all F.D.A.-approved manufacturers of any potential execution drug have now blocked their sale for this purpose," says Maya Foa. "Executing states must now go underground if they want to get hold of medicines for use in lethal injection." The mounting difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has already caused states to furtively scramble for supplies. Some states have used straw buyers or tried to import drugs from abroad that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, only to see them seized by federal agents. Other states have experimented with new drug combinations, sometimes with disastrous results, such as the prolonged execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona in 2014, using the sedative midazolam. A few states have adopted the electric chair, firing squad or gas chamber as an alternative if lethal drugs are not available. Since Utah chooses to have a death penalty, "we have to have a means of carrying it out," said State Representative Paul Ray as he argued last year for authorization of the firing squad.
I find these new adventures in controlling behaviour through fantastical intellectual property inventions deeply troublesome. Pfizer's moral concerns may indeed have merit, but in this case it seems to me that the end does not justify the means. If Pfizer wants to take a stand then they should should employ the means available to any other citizen. If Pfizer wants new law then they should argue for it with duly elected lawmakers, not presume to make the law themselves.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Why do you think that not getting to live out your life for decades after you've (for example) raped a child and cut her to pieces while she's alive isn't justice? Is it justice that the family of that girl gets to wake up every morning and look at her empty chair at the table before they head off to work to spend a bit of each day working so that some of their income can buy for her killer the breakfast she'll never again have? Spending decades providing food, medical care, education, housing, and entertainment for the person who, say, killed your mom with a knife in the gut in order to steal $5 from her purse - that's your idea of justice?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Just switch to nitrogen asphyxiation if you want a humane execution which isn't dependent upon strapping the condemned down to a table, having to have a non-professional put an IV in, trouble getting drugs, etc..."
Then watch liberals try to ban the 'dangerous chemical, nitrogen'. It will be the American version of this epic moment in Green theology:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa...