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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.
They don't want humane executions, they want the condemned to suffer and writhe around in pain.
But all they are doing is exercising their right to not sell you a product. There is no requirement for Pfizer or any other corporation to sell something to you if they don't want to. Of course you have the right to refuse to buy anything else from them and encourage others to do the same. But nothing they are doing is implicitly wrong.
When the cost argument started to gain traction here in Florida, Rick Scott just tried to make it cheaper to kill people by speeding up the process. It's not about justice, it's about revenge.
Or a 3rd option.
The amount that their chemicals were used for executions had to be small. So small as to be a rounding error on an executive excursion.
So they can say they are doing something. Sell the drugs to a 3rd party who then do the deed any on their behalf and they 'look good'. Remember this is one of many companies that manipulated the Oxy studies. They found the stuff was even more addictive than they originally believed and they buried it. Then when it was about to go generic they 'tweaked it' to make it 'safer' (no change) so they can continue with the glorious monopoly they had.
I do not buy for a second they are doing this to be good. LOOK good maybe. But to actually be good? That gets in the way of profits.
Except, of course, capital punishment isn't actually a deterrents.
It's vengeance, pure and simple, and while I understand why people want it, if it is going to continue, it shouldn't be wrapped up in the language of crime prevention, because it doesn't prevent crimes. Allowing capital punishment to be justified in this way is simply a way to make it more palatable, and state-sanctioned killings should be anything but palatable.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The real explanation, execution drugs make up a tiny amount of profit for them, the advertising and good image they project by making this declaration is far more valuable.
Without the appearance of pain, the execution doesn't satisfy the desire for revenge, which is the driving motive behind the death penalty.
How can a corporation have feelings?
Because it's made up of people. Strange that you don't actually understand that. Here's an experiment for you.
1) Start mowing lawns for some spare cash.
2) Notice that you're good at it, and start landscaping for a living.
3) Recognize that there are some good reasons to start functioning as a business, instead of having customers make out a check to you personally.
4) Take on bigger customers now that you're not just Jimmy with a lawn mower.
5) Grow to the point where you've got employees, a fleet of trucks, and customers who really rely on your services.
6) On the advice of your lawyer and your accountant, incorporate your business so that it can do things like continue to operate even after you get hit by a bus, and so that if one of your employees crashes a tractor into a client's propane tanks and burns down their dentist's office, you don't lose your house.
7) Congrats, you are now in charge of an Eeeeeeevil Corporation.
8) Look in the mirror. Did you lose your "feelings?" Do you suddenly not care about all of the things you used to care about?
Yeah. Funny about that. Consider forming your world view by talking to actual people instead of assuming that all businesses are run by comic book villains.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Exactly. Revenge one of the reasons that the death penalty is so childish and stupid. The second being that the people involved in the execution become no better than the person that they were murdering.
In the 1970's, the flower child generation spawned flower child researchers who used social "science" to arrive at flower child conclusions that they wanted. We are still feeling the effects of this bad research in many areas. This era was the plague that will not go away. Many of these are often discussed on these forums, I am looking at your gender wage discrepancy. There are many others.
If you stop and use the smell test a bit, tie to you own life. Threat of punishment is always in the calculus of a crime. If you steal that post it note, and the worst you get is a cold hard stare from an HR lady, you may do it. If it leads to your immediate termination, you leave that note the hell alone.
The death penalty will not deter a crime of passion. That is absolutely true. However, if you are thinking about murder, and you start imagining the needle is waiting for you.... Its a little different.
Anyways, people resist these old studies, and they often find different conclusions. Here is one on this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Except, of course, capital punishment isn't actually a deterrents.
It's vengeance, pure and simple, and while I understand why people want it, if it is going to continue, it shouldn't be wrapped up in the language of crime prevention, because it doesn't prevent crimes. Allowing capital punishment to be justified in this way is simply a way to make it more palatable, and state-sanctioned killings should be anything but palatable.
Whether anyone is deterred by the possibility of a State Execution while contemplating an act that carries the Capital Punishment is debatable, once on Death Row they sure try mighty hard to get stay alive
Not this case, there are many ways to kill people, none of them are humane...
Capital punishment is widely considered cruel and inhuman punishment in violation of the human rights convention.
The US and Japan is the last western countries to maintain this barbaric practice...
No, I think it's alright for companies to stand up against this issue.. Seriously, European countries have threaten local companies that they could face criminal charges if they exported drugs intended to murder people.
I'm not even sure that's so far fetched, when capital punishment is seen as a human rights violation, why shouldn't your company be held responsible for murder, if you export drugs for such purposes.
I don't want to be the one patronizing all you "helpful experts" suggesting wonderful alternative methods to get rid of (execute) your inmates. History has taught us endless options to end the life of fellow humans, there is no shortage at all, lest the need for more.
But a large part of the rest of this planet frowns upon this fixation and desire to implement the death penalty. I wouldn't hurt to look in your mirror critically and realize in what good company you guys are (think Saudi Arabia, Iran north Korea etc)
Please, use you're knowledge and good judgement, your academic independent view, to suggest options for the US to join the rest of the civilised world and to abolish the death penalty.
What you guys really need is a more humane society, not a more efficient way to kill humans. You already excel in that subject.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
This is one reason why advocates of the death penalty tend to reject the use of nitrogen. They want to see the condemned suffer at least a little - if the condemned dies happily, then people will feel justice has not been done.
Remember, people are basically bastards. Often 'justice' is just a polite veneer for 'collective revenge.' This person has made the group suffer, so the books can not be set straight until the same has been done to him.
Do you really think a mugger or whatever is thinking that far ahead?
Sure, it's going to stop the honest people who consider their actions and consequences but they already have plenty of things to stop them.
Criminals have a bad habit of not doing what they are told to do so your "sending a message" is unlikely to work. Maybe those "flower child researchers", some of who served in Korea and Vietnam, fit your definition of "a real man" more than any of the readers of this website and thus did not arrive at "flower child conclusions". Criminology isn't for the faint of heart after all.
When completely deprived of oxygen, loss of consciousness occurs within about 12 seconds, and death after about a minute. This is why the safety briefing aboard airliners says in the event of cabin depressurization you should put your oxygen mask on first, then your child's. If you try to put your child's mask on first, you'll likely go unconscious before you can get around to putting yours on.
It really is the perfect way to painlessly kill someone. Which I suspect is why it's not covered more by the media (a huge majority of whom are against the death penalty). A large part of the opposition to the death penalty is based on potential suffering of the prisoner. Presented with a guaranteed way to avoid that suffering, that opposition evaporates.
Disclaimer: I don't have a moral problem with a death penalty in certain cases, but I do not believe our current legal system is accurate enough to justify the use of death as a punishment. IMHO its irreversible nature disqualifies it from use in a justice system which has been proven to be error-prone.
Being a murderer isn't as bad as being a mass murderer, but it's still bad.
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Even if it were completely painless I would still have a problem with the death penalty: there is no judicial system on earth that is completely error-free, so such a system will kill innocent people. Give them life without parole by all means: at least that way the punishment can be abandoned if it is discovered there had been a miscarriage of justice.
So what you're saying is basically:
- The death penalty increases recidivism
- OK, maybe technically, recidivism is actually impossible
- But: according to some alternative definition of recidivism which has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual word, it does increase recidivism!
I was going to just write "woosh", but apparently you did get the joke (as evidenced by the "yes, I know" part) yet still want to insist I'm wrong. Strange.
You know there's a youtube video called how to kill a human being where the pro death penalty guy is against nitrogen asphyxiation because it literally isn't gruesome enough.
Exactly - to all appearances, the American penal system is not primarily about justice or rehabilitation, but revenge and control. I don't remember how many times I have heard that "jail isn't supposed to be a holiday, it is supposed to feel like punishment". This fails to take into account several things - firstly that punishment to effective as a means of correcting behaviour must be accepted by the person punished as being reasonable and fair. Vindictive punishment causes resentment, which counteract any beneficial effect it might have had.
Secondly, many offenders don't have a lot of education or self-esteem, and they may not realise that they could lead a much better life if they learned to do the right things. I think most young offenders fall into this category - they don't wat to be criminals, drug addicts, violent or anything like that, but all they have learned tells them that they are worthless. They haven't done well in school, perhaps because the teachers are crap, perhaps because their home environment doesn't support learning; what hope do they have? Crime can seem so easy in that situation. And then we punish them vindictively, which confirms that they are worthless to society, and that they might as well carry on - at least it feels a little like getting back at a smug and overbearing society.
America is supposed to be one of the most religiously devoted countries in the developed world, but there seems to be little evidence of a willingness to forgive and get the best out of people. Perhaps this is because "religious" means "believing in holy scriptures rather than havingreal faith"; whatever the case may be, it is shameful.
This is a giant strawman. The vast majority of criminals are not Jeffrey Dahlmer and are not serving a life sentence. This means that for MOST inmates the prison system is there to rehabilitate them to society.
No-one's arguing that there aren't mentally unstable individuals who cannot be released and so on, but tehabilitation and making sure the inmates, once released, do not commit crimes again is the primary focus of any sane penal system. If you look at actual data and charts on reconviction rates you'll note they go up as the length of the sentence goes up. This means the more time the inmate spends in jail, the higher the chance of them committing a crime again is. The US is not the only country where this happens, but if time spent in jail increases instead of decreases the chances of a re-conviction, it ought to be clear that the system is faulty.
Compare that to something like Norway which has one of the 'softest' prison systems and has no life imprisonment (technically, although with people like Brevik it's unlikely he will ever be let free, as they have to pass an assessment before release or the sentence can be continued, and even if he's ever released he'll probably be released into a mental institution) and has incredibly humane conditions (that is it allows for the inmates to live fairly normal lives within controlled conditions), the re-conviction rates are far lower because it turns out if you treat prisoners as people instead of cattle to be kept in small boxes and the released after several years with limited rights and next to no employment options, they actually for the most part turn out to become productive members of society.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
That as well, but also the point is to try and make sure they do not do those things again. If you're going to say it doesn't make a difference whether the reconvition rate is 15 % or 99 % then I don't really understand how you deem society benefits from high reconviction. It's obviously better the lower the re-conviction rates are, both for the inmate as well as for the socíety, so to argue that rehabilitation is not an important function of the system makes no sense to me.
They do not account for that yes, that's one thing that surely factors into it as well, I should have pointed this out in my post, my bad.
Still point being: prisoners released from the US system have significantly worse outlook than their western counterparts as the felony conviction pretty much makes it impossible to get employment, and in some states even blocks access to housing etc. If you keep people who're already violent/dangerous when they come in in rather inhumane conditions, then you release them with even less of a chance of making a living legally than before they went in, it should not come as a surprise that most of these people turn back to crime. Ex-inmates are societal outcasts, which make them a ripe target for organized crime tor recruit.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Except that rape isn't about sex, it's about control. Castration has been found not to work