New details of IV team’s attempts to find a vein shared by Pike’s lawyer ‘shocked and disturbed’ practitioners

New details of IV team’s attempts to find a vein shared by Pike’s lawyer ‘shocked and disturbed’ practitioners

Medical experts have expressed shock at the apparent incompetence shown by Tennessee’s execution team during the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, the prisoner who survived a normally fatal dose of pentobarbital, which they say would be considered medical malpractice in any other setting.

New details emerged on Thursday of how Tennessee’s intravenous (IV) team struggled for almost an hour to set up a line into Pike’s arms through which she would be administered the fatal dose of sedative. A blow-by-blow account was released in legal proceedings from Pike’s lawyer, Randy Spivey, who was present inside the death chamber at her 30 September failed execution.

The technical procedures attempted by the four unidentified members of the IV team as they tried to find a vein, as described by Spivey, provoked alarm among medical experts. They said the standards applied appeared to fall glaringly short of anything that would be deemed acceptable in a medical environment.

  • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
    111·
    2 天前

    I’m guessing no licensed doctor or nurse or medicine practitioner of any sorts would have wanted to take place in that, so they took whatever muppets they could find?

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
      85·
      2 天前

      No need to guess, that’s exactly what happens. No ethical medical professional participates in executions.

      • ergonomic_importer@piefed.caEnglish
        31·
        2 天前

        Including the drugs that are used. Which reputable pharmaceutical company wants to be associated with producing the drugs for lethal injection?

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish
          15·
          2 天前

          The drugs stopped being produced in 2011. So what remains has expired at this point.

          So even if we consider they have stocks, those meds will not work as intended.

          Expired meds can have a lot of differences. Sometimes they are fine for years after expiration. Sometimes they become less effective. Sometimes they have wildly different effects and interactions and the medication breaks down.

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
            55·
            20 小时前

            Unless you actually know the shelf life of pentobarbital, that argument isn’t even worth making.

            All drugs are required to have an expiration date. Drug companies will only go so far out on that time period in order to cover their asses. Plus, it’s bad for business if you’re selling meds put people could still safely use them 20 years later and don’t need to buy fresh stock. Pentobarbital could start losing potency in 5 years, or it could be shelf stable for 100.

            Regardless, this wasn’t the drugs fault. A flipping 24 gauge needle. Oof. I’m just an EMT and I know that’s way too stupidly small. Not to mention all the other signs.

            • Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish
              7·
              2 天前

              This is absolutely true, but i would challenge the assertion about making people throw away good meds being bad for business.

              The law passed in 1979 requiring manufacturers to provide an expiration date of when they could guarantee a drug was still safe and fully effective did not require that the manufacturers do any long term tests, to establish accurate dates though. Many companies slapped a one year date on the labels and called it a day.

              They could guarantee a year with then current testing protocols and if people had to toss their perfectly good meds and buy more, then that would just be good for company profits.

              The US military keeps huge stockpiles of medicines on hand. Faced with throwing away millions of dollars of meds every year they commissioned a study.

              With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years. What they found from the study is 90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.

              Pharmaceutical companies were happy to tellpeople throw away medicines years before they needed to.

            • halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish
              8·
              2 天前

              Unless you actually no the shelf life of pentobarbital, that argument isn’t even worth making.

              John Criscio, president of Absolute Standards, said the company ceased producing pentobarbital in December 2020.

              Absolute Standards, says it needs to be refrigerated and has a shelf life of 2 1/2 years.

            • erin@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              11·
              1 天前

              Expired pentobarbital likely played a role in the failed execution. Assuming they kept the vials in perfect, dark storage and it’s formulated with stabilizers, it could last a long time, many years, but if any of those perfect conditions for pharmaceutical storage aren’t met, that time drops to a couple years max. I highly doubt prisons have ideal storage for their lethal injection medication, especially because no ethical medical professional will be involved.

              • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
                2·
                1 天前

                Did you even read the article? They blew out her veins and never administered it into her blood stream. Her stating that her arm felt like it was on fire and that the administors were having a hard time pushing saline is proof to the fact. It’s not designed to kill you if it isn’t injected into the blood stream. The old stock 100% had nothing to do with it.

    • Not a newt@piefed.caEnglish
      341·
      2 天前

      Ideally yes, but

      • I know too many medical practitioners that refused to mask up during covid
      • I know of workers in medical and social careers that chose it because they want power over other people
      • There’s, unsurprisingly, a significant overlap between the above two groups

      I wouldn’t put it past some of them to volunteer for a job like this because they get a chubby from causing suffering to patients.

      • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
        34·
        2 天前

        My sons gf is in nursing school right now and she and I were talking about the people in her cohort who are anti vax and the overlap with the overt religious right and virtue signaling and “care culture” there’s absolutely a whole group of people within medicine exactly as you described who have values completely at odds with the hippocratic oath

        • TheGoldenV@lemmy.world
          30·
          2 天前

          My wife’s residency director is anti vax. This is a person in charge of teaching new doctors. She’s also a super Christian originally from Idaho.

          Absolutely disgusting.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
          41·
          2 天前

          there is a strange relationship between nursing and right wing christians, something about thier only JOB for these people.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        11·
        2 天前

        Nurses i can see that, because places are so short for nurses, they sometime let certain types of nurses thoguh the cracks.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      2 天前

      There are doctors who take their Hypocritic Oath more seriously than their Hippocratic Oath

    • Taldan@lemmy.world
      71·
      2 天前

      Your average phlebotomist will be far better than most doctors and nurses at putting in a line

      They easily could have found a phlebotomist who needed the extra money. This is simply incompetence. Unbelievable levels of it

      • gigaqps@lemmy.world
        9·
        2 天前

        They easily could have found a phlebotomist who needed the extra money.

        Is it actually all that easy to find medical professionals who don’t have qualms about killing people as a side gig from their day job of healing people?

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      11·
      2 天前

      they dont, they have some janky "medical staff’ to do it. likely not even taken a phelbotomy course. nurses and doctors arnt going to risk thier LICENSE and reputation, they can make more money in private pratices without the potential to get blackballed.