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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.
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...
The supplies can be had at any welding shop for not much money.
I don't read AC A human right
Put them in jail instead.
It's cheaper and a wrongful conviction can be reversed.
The majority of countries no longer have the death penalty.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Isn't a patient someone who can be healed/rehabilitated?
If they're up for execution, hasn't a decision been made about whether this is feasible?
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.
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
You might want to look up "recidivism" in a dictionary, and then maybe some research into the "recidivism rate", which is not zero.
In a universe that contains "recidivism", but does not contain "zombie crime spree", execution must, by the definitions of the words involved, deter and prevent crime.
Q.E.D.
See that "Preview" button?
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 ???
Yes and no. Yes it is technically the same right, however certain types of discrimination are unlawful. You cannot refuse to serve someone because of their race is another example of unlawful discrimination.
However, if I sold hydroponics kit and you came to me wanting to use it for growing Pot I am within my rights to refuse you service. (Swap pot for tomatoes and the same rationale holds)
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.
If a state was being "humane" it wouldn't execute people in the first place. And that being so it should just drop the pretense and shoot them. Shoot them in the heart and they'll rapidly lose consciousness and die. It's quick, it's effective, it's cheap. And it could be done in a way that doesn't require a human firing squad if that's a concern.
It's actually about giving the rest of society an incentive to not engage in the same crimes for which someone else was found guilty.
No it isn't. The US has gone WAY beyond the level of penalties that have a beneficial effect in deterring crime. The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation and yet it doesn't have lower crime rates. In fact the US has HIGHER rates of several types of violent crimes. No, the penalties that are handed out and conditions of the prisons has everything to do with politics and very little to do with crime prevention. Being "tough on crime" gets votes regardless of the effectiveness or morality of the actions that result.
Just like the police do not come until a crime is happening, or after the fact, a disincentive can not be given until someone is judged guilty by a jury of their peers.
Police routinely show up in places where a crime is reasonably likely to occur. Police being present in a location with no crime being committed mostly makes it less likely that a crime will occur. Happens all the time.
Handing out increasingly disproportional punishments for crimes does nothing to improve deterrence of crimes further.
The police are not there to save you from a crime, they are there to clean up after the fact.
Incorrect. They are there for both purposes. Police are both a deterrent and and enforcement mechanism.