US pharma firm Pfizer stops availability of products for lethal injections

Pfizer has announced it 'strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment' and is to stop making them available. The US concern joins a long list of others taking similar measures.

  

Deutsche Welle, 14 May 2016

Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, is to stop making its powerful drugs available for executions, according to a report in the New York Times on Friday.

Pfizer joins over 20 US and EU pharma firms that have stopped making their drugs available. The EU banned exports of a sedative used to carry out lethal injections in the US in 2011.

"We are enforcing a distribution restriction for specific products that have been part of, or considered by some states for, their lethal injection protocols," Pfizer said on its website. "Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment."

Breaking News: Pfizer has blocked its drugs from being used in lethal injections https://t.co/ou2Nk0szoc

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 13, 2016

Effective immediately, Pfizer said it would closely screen and restrict the wholesale distribution of the seven products: propofol, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide and vecuronium bromide.

The US corporation headquartered in New York City called on its partners not to resell the drugs to correction agencies.

The move means there are no remaining sources approved by the Federal Drug Agency (FDA) of lethal injection drugs in the US.

Can't say, won't say

In Florida a series of three injections have been used for executions in the death chamber at Florida State Prison: Midazolam hydrochloride, which sedates the inmate; vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. The source of those chemicals is protected under state law.

"The Florida Department of Corrections does not disclose the identities of our drug suppliers," Department of Corrections spokesman McKinley Lewis said.

Finding alternatives

"Executing states must now go underground if they want to get hold of medicines for use in lethal injection," Maya Foa of the advocacy group Reprieve told the New York Times.

Some have switched to alternative methods such as the electric chair and firing squads. In 2015 Utah approved the use of a firing squad as a backup if lethal injection drugs were unavailable. It is so far the only state to do so, although Mississippi is also considering using the method should lethal injection drugs be unavailable. Utah has executed three men by firing squad, the most recent execution of this type being conducted in 2010.

Meanwhile, federal agents in Phoenix in 2015 reportedly seized $27,000 (23.8 million euros) worth of sodium thiopental illegally imported by the Arizona department of corrections, while in 2014 the state of Louisiana obtained hydromorphone for an execution from a hospital without telling hospital officials what it was going to be used for, according to the New York Times report.

The US state of Virginia has executed a prison inmate by lethal injection. More details here http://t.co/QoPsJ02QMc pic.twitter.com/TemYW2nWzQ

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 2, 2015

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"THE BRIDGE OF SWORDS" – Sep 29, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - (Text Version)

“…I'm in Canada and I know it, but I will tell those listening and reading in the American audience the following: Get ready! Because there are some institutions that are yet to fall, ones that don't have integrity and that could never be helped with a bail out. Again, we tell you the biggest one is big pharma, and we told you that before. It's inevitable. If not now, then in a decade. It's inevitable and they will fight to stay alive and they will not be crossing the bridge. For on the other side of the bridge is a new way, not just for medicine but for care. Paradigms that have not yet been thought of, which don't represent any system that currently exists, will be created and developed by young minds who have concepts that the seniors don't know about. Things that don't have integrity today will fall over tomorrow. Just get ready. It's all part of what's on the other side of the bridge. And the old energy won't like it, and they will object. …”