Pfizer Blocks The Use Of Its Drugs In Executions 566
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.
Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't want humane executions, they want the condemned to suffer and writhe around in pain.
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Perfect finale to 20+ years of psychological torture on death row.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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. 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.
The police are not there to save you from a crime, they are there to clean up after the fact. The penal system is not enacting it's penalties with an aim to rehabilitate e.g. Jeffrey Dahmer, it's enacting its penalties to stop the next Jeffrey Dahmer from eating his first victim.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [nih.gov] and charts [nih.gov] 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 [businessinsider.com] 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.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Lower recidivism is good, but rehabilitation isn't the only way to get there. For instance, you can increase sentence lengths dramatically... then when they're released, they've aged out of the criminal population. You don't see a lot of 65 year old gangbangers.
Another effective technique is surgical castration. It lowers sex drive and aggression which would help people not recommit violent crimes including rape. It's pretty harsh, but I think if we made it a mandatory procedure for anybody convicted of a 2
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that rape isn't about sex, it's about control. Castration has been found not to work
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Luis Vargas and those like him might disagree with those castrations. Cleared 16 years after being convicted of 3 rapes. Our system is far too broken and will always be so to allow permanent things like that.
Politics, not deterrence (Score:3)
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
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Without the appearance of pain, the execution doesn't satisfy the desire for revenge, which is the driving motive behind the death penalty.
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Your argument is simply stupid given the components of a lethal cocktail. The two first injections are given exactly for the opposite purpose you claim. Induce a paralysis state and decontract the subject sentenced to death. This is so, because the third injection is the actual lethal one and is actually very painful inducing a cardiac arrest.
Btw, just in case you don't know about it, in countries where medically assisted suicide is legal, this is about the same cocktail they administer to patients. No one
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Your argument is simply stupid given the components of a lethal cocktail. The two first injections are given exactly for the opposite purpose you claim. Induce a paralysis state and decontract the subject sentenced to death. This is so, because the third injection is the actual lethal one and is actually very painful inducing a cardiac arrest.
I never understood why not give them a big ol' dose of smack? I'm sure they have plenty of heroin in evidence rooms all over. They know what the lethal dosage is and can ensure they give double whatever it is. Shoot them up and send them on their way.
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There is a large difference between someone choosing to be put out of their misery and the state killing someone for some sense of vengeance.
I have to say:
Someone who commits a crime for which the penalty is death has chosen to be put out of their misery. It's suicide by state, and in many ways is no different than suicide by cop or suicide by jumping in front of a BART train.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a murderer isn't as bad as being a mass murderer, but it's still bad.
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So killing Hitler is as bad as being Hitler then?
If you can stop him without killing him, yes. Otherwise, no. Fire away. The only time violence is justified is when it will prevent more violence. The problem is figuring out when that is. As an act of self-defense counts, though.
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Not at all. Not all killing is murder. Please follow along. The state decides what is just killing and what is murder. If you think the state is wrong, change it by either a democratic process, force, or depose the state and insert your own authority which is what happened with Saddam.
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Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know that the death penalty significantly reduces recidivism when compared to life in prison.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
you're talking about america. people would queue if given the chance to press the electrocute button.
if i could pick how to be executed, my friend (A&E nurse) tells me insulin injection and subsequent hypoglycemic shock is as peaceful a way to go as it gets. i'm also pretty sure it allows for organ harvest which i'd definitely want.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Informative)
Just switch to nitrogen asphyxiation if you want a humane execution
Oklahoma has already legalized N2 asphyxiation as a backup to lethal injection. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed it into law last year. In other news, Mary Fallin is supposedly on Donald Trump's short list for VP.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately that would never happen. I'm sure it would be the usual setup of a physician ensuring the location of the heart is marked as a target, multiple people firing, probably with a couple pointless blanks (shooters can tell the difference, hence pointless). A single shot to the head would be too reminiscent of executions by dictators and terrorists.
While I'm perfectly fine with execution when there is absolute proof of guilt there are too many people on death row under falsified evidence or just plain shit law enforcement or legal work. Right now incarceration for life is cheaper anyway.
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Why the heart? The ribs can do a pretty good job of deflecting a bullet away from it's original path, your brain however (despite being surrounded by bone) is a far better target... though does tend to prevent an open casket wake/funeral.
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Shoot straight you bastards. Don't make a mess of it.
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Breaker Morant
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Informative)
No.
See, in most people, the breathing reflex is triggered by the presence of carbon dioxide - not the absence of oxygen. You could walk into a room containing pure nitrogen, breathe away, and feel just fine - right up until you collapse because of a lack of oxygen (in fact, you'd stop breathing reflexively, because your carbon dioxide levels would fall too low for the reflex to kick in). The same thing would happen with pure helium, pure argon, pure sulphur hexafluoride, etc. Any gas that is inert to the human body will work for this purpose (which rules out chlorine, fluorine, and other reactive gases.)
This isn't about forcing nitrogen into the body at high pressure (which is what happens as a precursor to the bends). This is about displacing the oxygen in a way that the body doesn't pick up on - it'd be like the executed victim just falls asleep and never wakes up.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't about forcing nitrogen into the body at high pressure
That would cause nitrogen narcosis [wikipedia.org], which would actually be a pleasurable way to die. I have felt it a bit when doing deep scuba dives, and it was a nice feeling. I have heard it compared to cocaine. Fortunately, I was still sober enough to start heading up before I did something stupid enough to kill myself.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Take away his knowledge of /when/ it will happen. Death row with PRNG selection.
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No, with nitrogen asphyxiation you replace the oxygen with nitrogen and the subject just passes out then dies from lack of oxygen. There's not even the sensation of choking to death that you'd get with CO2.
The bends is caused by pressure differentials causing bubbles to form inside the bloodstream or other bodily fluids.
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No. Bends is caused by a rapid reduction in pressure, hence its proper name, decompression sickness.
Nitrogen asphyxiation wouldn't involve any such pressure change, as it would involve a normal air pressure chamber, just without enough oxygen.
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Couple problems with what you said. First, the bends is caused by N2 'bubbling' out of solution in the blood due to a drop in pressure - at higher pressures more N2 will dissolve into water, and therefore blood. That's why you need to pause when rising from sufficient depth.
Keep the pressure the same, no N2 bubbling will take place, and therefore no bends.
Second, As the AC said, humans detect CO2 levels, not O2 levels. So what happens is that CO2 AND O2 will both tend to diffuse out of the blood - CO2 di
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If my child were the executed, I would ask why it is that I have to suffer for having given birth to a person who inherited genes for a sociopathic schizophrenia.
You could always not go. But from the perspective of the family of the victim, if they want someone to be killed, I don't see why they should be shielded from the consequences. Trying to cover up brutality by making it seem clinical just makes it more insidious.
Saudi Arabia-style public beheadings are honest compared to what the United States does.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Informative)
It takes a minute or two at the least. And the suffoccee will gasp ferociously while tearing at their throat during before unconsciousness ensues. It is a horror show.
This is wrong. Inert gas asphyxiation [wikipedia.org] is quick and painless. The victim usually does not even detect that anything is wrong before losing consciousness. There is no sensation of suffocation because there is no CO2 buildup in the blood.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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> Have you ever seen a mammal die of Displacement Asphyxiation (via nitrogen, argon, or anything else inert and devoid of oxygen)?
Yes, in fact, I have. I've seen a human die of anoxia while diving with a rebreather.
> It takes a minute or two at the least. And the suffoccee will gasp ferociously while tearing at their throat during before unconsciousness ensues. It is a horror show.
This is patently untrue. CO2 buildup will cause the reactions you are describing- but not inert gas asphyxiation. Please p
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Just to be certain, nuke them from orbit.
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Blocked in the USA, sadly. I think I've seen the video though.
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Nitrogen (Score:2)
A simple gas mask and a tank of Nitrogen and you've got a guaranteed execution toolkit. There is no need for "exotic" chemicals.
Search wikipedia for Inert_gas_asphyxiation
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If you use CO2, then yes, it's not painless. Using nitrogen instead causes the person to pass out and die.
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Yes- because they used CO2. CO2 forms carbonic acid in the blood stream which upsets the acid-base homeostasis. Our brains detect that imbalance which is what triggers the breathing reflex. The more CO2 you give them- the higher the level of carbonic acid- and the stronger the reaction. In other words- it's not lack of oxygen that causes us to want to breathe- it's too much CO2.
If you fill a room with only Nitrogen, or just place a non-rebreather mask on their face and connected to a Nitrogen tank- they wil
An alternative to the death penalty (Score:5, Informative)
Put them in jail instead.
It's cheaper [deathpenaltyinfo.org] and a wrongful conviction [innocenceproject.org] can be reversed.
The majority of countries no longer have the death penalty. [wikipedia.org]
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Where do you think they are while waiting to be executed?
More so, slow walking of executions ends up imposing a sentence "no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death"
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I'm not sure where you're going with that, but the phrase you quoted argues against your position. [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I live in Florida (Score:4, Insightful)
They're removed from society.
No, they're not. Or are you imagining some sort of dungeon they're thrown into until they starve to death after a few weeks? If you're not, then consider that such prisoners are actually part of a large culture within the facility where they're detained. Their needs are seen to by large numbers of people who are very much part of the wider society, and the wider society very much has to spend part of every day producing the goods and services needed to keep that person alive. If they were removed from society, then society would have none those burdens. And no, for many people, it's NOT enough to lock them up, because they still get to live and carry on and read novels and watch movies and be fed and cared for - possibly for several decades - while the person whose life they snuffed out cannot, and the lives impacted by that are forever robbed of what was taken. And yet they get to support the person who took that life, every day.
Re:I live in Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I live in Florida (Score:5, Interesting)
And then your state executes my relative who later is proven to be not guilty. For revenge, I will execute the judge(s) and executioner who murdered my relative. Is that OK with you?
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Why do you think that not getting to live out your life for decades after you've
Because living in a box for the rest of your days with nothing but your regrets and no freedom is not a life, it's being alive. What if the death peanalty is an escape for people who commit those types of serious crimes. Have you considered that they want to die and that their way of acheiving notoriety is by commiting grusome crimes?
Have you considered that a punishment far worse than death is to let them rot in a cell for the rest of their days with only their sick thoughts to keep them company and no wa
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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?
Why do you think that murder is justice?
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?
My idea of justice is a world that doesn't create quite so many rapists and murderers to begin with, and your comfortable life is predicated in part upon their creation. In order for you to flourish, others are made to suffer. It's the American way! Or, you might say, the Capitalist Ideal! A is A!
People don't rape or murder because they feel good inside. And your happiness is predicated upon their unhappiness. Your lifestyle raped that child. Mine, too. Now you want t
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When someone decides to kill other people essentially for sport, they have waived any claim to continued life on their part. If they were killed on the spot while committing (or trying to) such an act, it would be considered entirely reasonable. Murder is what they are doing. Delivering to them the consequences of their assertion that they think other people sho
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Here and elsewhere in the thread, you conjure up horrifying scenarios based on the most depraved exemplars you can imagine. Who could argue that such remoseless, rape-and-murder-for-sport serial mutilators deserve to live?!?! (And stowed away in the same rhetorical boat: Who could argue against torture if it was the only way to prevent a nuke from exploding under a stadium full of people in 4 m
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I don't understand why it would be more expensive to house a person than to get rid of them regardless of the reason. The drugs can't cost that much and they're otherwise just regular prisoners.
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1. Death penalty prisoners are usually housed separate from other prisoners. Usually, the conditions are better than other prisoners get. There is more security, because these people have little to lose.
2. All those appeals cost money.
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The short answer is lawyer fees.
More spent to defend the defendant, longer trial, and the thing that most people don't know - the taxpayer ends up paying for all their appeals if they are on death row. But life in prison, we are not on the hook for that.
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Put them in jail instead.
On my planet we just fly them out to the nearest black hole and kick them in. It's essentially free, since we already make regular trips to dump our trash. Plus there's no escaping - even their ghosts can't get out for the trillions of years it takes the black hole to evaporate.
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I don't really get how, say, a bullet can cost more than keeping someone in prison for 50 years or so.
WWII war trials were done by the victors. Both the USSR and Nazi Germany committed atrocities and killed millions of people (Stalin was not as picky about his victims though - anyone could be sent to the gulag, starved to death or just shot - it did not depend on being or not being a certain race or ethnicity), however, nobody put Stalin on trial. If the Nazis won the war, the communists would have been on
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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
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Probably mostly 2, though it's probably not millennials, but rather the EU. They've made their opposition to capital punishment well known and have already applied export restrictions to their own pharmaceutical companies regarding execution drugs. The next logical step is to apply them to non-EU companies that do business in the EU, under pain of being shut out of their market. "Oh, you want to sell them drugs for executions? Fine, we're not going to buy anything from you. Oh, and those patents You ca
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Inert gas asphyxiation? (Score:2)
What ever happened to good old inert gas asphyxiation [wikipedia.org]?
It is an alternative execution method [npr.org] by law in Oklahoma.
rest of world vs USA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Just shoot them (Score:3)
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.
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How many corporations (drug or otherwise) take the Hippocratic oath?
I doubt Charles Pfizer did as he wasn't an MD, only a chemist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The current chairman & CEO Ian Read is also not a doctor, having a degree in chemical engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I suggest you learn to read where I said I was familiar with the accusations, shame you are more interested in stalking than facts.
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Which Hippocatic oath? It's been revised so many times that some variants no longer have any recognisable connection to the original. Really should take his name off it.
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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?
Re: Good (Score:2)
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So rare I hear someone supporting Citizens United around these parts, bravo!
More so, they are employing the same means available to other citizens... withholding consent.
Not everyone servers on a jury, let alone a capitol case where the jury has the option to impose the death penalty.
Re:Corporation trumps government (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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)
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The government should pass a new law that says "companies that make $chamicals_suitable_for_execution pay 98% income tax by default, allowing to use said chemicals in execution lowers that tax rate to $normal".
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So the companies move out of the state (assuming they have any presence there to begin with), no more tax leverage.
Moral trumps Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Architects don't want to be responsible for designing prisons with execution chambers and death rows.
Builders don't want to build them.
Now drug companies don't want to assist.
It's effectively the rest of the world (and many of America's own people) putting sanctions on this. Regardless of legality executions are going to be a logistical nightmare.
Re:This is nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Except: it does (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Doesn't work like that (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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However, if you are thinking about murder, and you start imagining the needle is waiting for you.... Its a little different.
Yes, I can see it all so clearly now:
"Well, I plan on getting caught, so if that would get me executed I would never do it. But if it's just three times life of being raped every day in an American hellhole prison hey, why the hell not?"
Think you nailed it, there.
Fucking barbarians.
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Severity of punishment multiplied by chance of capture.
If the prospect of life or most of their life in prison doesn't deter someone, it's because they either do not care about the rest of their life at the time (crime of passion) or they are confident they will escape capture. Either way, the threat of execution is not going to be any more effective a deterrent.
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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. ...
If you stop and use the smell test a bit
So, you reject research because ad hominem, and prefer your highly scientific smell test instead. Not an entirely solid foundation for your argument.
Threat of punishment is always in the calculus of a crime.
It's a very small part of the equation. Most crime is committed because the person is desperate, has little to lose, isn't thinking clearly or feels they have no choice. Countries that have got rid of the death penalty and other extremely harsh punishments have not seem crime rates rise as a result. In fact of all the western nations with it, the one with the d
Re:This is nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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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.
Re:Corporate conscience (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 fl
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Is this what you do?
You asked a snarky, ignorant question intended to push some agenda of yours that characterizes the people who own and run businesses as being unable to have feelings. That was an absurd posture on your part. I gave you something to react to. Feel free, instead of resorting to lazy ad hominem, to point out where in the chain of events you just read the transition occurs to the person running a business no longer being able to have feelings. Be specific, or consider no longer trying to paint that whiny Corpo
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You are looking at it as a monolith instead of an organ that obeys the will of a very limited number of people who have feelings to express. Sometimes it's only a single person using a corporation to express their will.
Usually only in fiction. That's a common line to take for those who wish to evade responsibility though. It's kind of like blaming the gun and not the person who lined up the shot
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Corporations exist to reduce individual livability & allow a group of people to act as one under the law.
More the latter than the former.
Jeff's construction simply would never have the resources to put together a mega project like a large bridge, skyscraper, or dam, or what if Jeff died midway through the project and the company was dissolved and diluted through his heirs? And is anybody on the hook.. since the construction contract was with Jeff personally and he's dead now...
A corporation exists primarily to allow people to pool capital and provide 'governance' for it that can survive an individual.
Everythin
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Stupid Windows 8.1 browser not doing spell checking...
Not hypocritical (Score:2)
Employing people in a country that has leadership which performs horrible things
vs
Selling your drug directly to an organisation which will do horrible things with your product.
The first part still isn't great, but there's still a world of difference.