Don't Use Our Drug Pentobarbital To Execute People, Lundbeck Tells State Of Virgina

Posted by taznetwork at 5:11 AM . Monday, August 22, 2011

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Lundbeck, a Danish pharmaceutical company, has objected to the use of pentobarbital, which was used to execute convicted murderer and rapist, Jerry Jackson, 30, by lethal injection in the State of Virgina, USA. Jackson had murdered an 88-year-old woman. He had climbed into her bathroom window during an attempted burglary, she awoke and confronted him, he sexually assaulted her and then placed a pillow over her face until she died.

Because of a shortage of drugs, the State of Virginia used Lundbeck's epilepsy drug, pentobarbital. Lundbeck said that using pentobarbital for executions is a "distressing misuse" of its medication.

Pentobarbital was obtained by Virginia authorities before Lundbeck imposed strict controls on its distribution in an attempt to keep the drug out of prisons that perform executions.

A spokesman for Lundbeck, Matt Flesch, in an interview with the BBC, said:

"We're in the business to improve people's lives, so the use of pentobarbital to end people's lives contradicts everything that we're in business to do."

34 of 50 US States allow capital punishment. They have had difficulty in obtaining the right drugs for their lethal injection. Consequently, they have had to seek out other medications. Pharmaceutical companies worldwide have been trying to prevent their products from being used for capital punishment.

Most lethal injections consist of three drugs. One to knock the prisoner out, the second to paralyze him/her, and the third to stop the heart. Experts say the aim of the second one is to mask any signs of whether or not the first drug worked. If the first drug does not work, experts say that the death can be extremely painful.

Sodium thiopental used to be the drug of choice to render the prisoner unconscious. However, Hospira, the only manufacturer of sodium thiopental in the USA, stopped producing it. For a while they relied on Dream Pharma, a British company, for sodium thiopental. However, in 2010 British authorities banned its export. So, US states turned to Lundbeck's pentobarbital. Pentobarbital has been used in 23 executions in the USA this year.

Lundbeck says it cannot stop production. Pentobarbital, known under brand name Nembutal, is used for treating severe epilepsy and doctors say it would be difficult to treat some patients without it.

Lundbeck says it will check all its orders and refuse deliveries of pentobarbital to prisons in US states that have capital punishment. Customers will have to confirm in writing that they will not use the drug for executions.

Lundbeck's CEO said:

"While the company has never sold the product directly to prisons and therefore can't make guarantees, we are confident that our new distribution program will play a substantial role in restricting prisons' access to Nembutal for misuse as part of lethal injection."

Written by Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Article Reference:
Sources: Reuters, BBC, various Danish media outlets.

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