By Kim Palmer
20 hours ago
...She said the state will turn to a combination of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, for the November execution....
Versed (midazolam) is very short acting.
...Florida used midazolam along with two other drugs in an execution on October 15, but not with hydromorphone, he said.
According to the Food and Drug Administration database of drugs, Midazolam injections are marketed by a number of companies including Fresenius Kabi USA, a unit of the German drugmaker, and hydromorphone and midazolam are both marketed by Hospira Inc and Akorn....
How is it that Florida is getting away with this?
Hydromorphone is a synthetic morphine. None of these drugs even closely resembles or mimics pentobarbital. One of the uses of pentobarbital is to control seizures which would be important during an execution.
Pentobarbital is used short-term to treat insomnia. Pentobarbital is also used as an emergency treatment for seizures, and to cause you to fall asleep for surgery.
It is the long chain of hydrogen-carbon bonds which make pentobarbital effective. It avails more hydrogens for interaction with the body and there for highly effective in sedation and control of seizures and breathing. The other drugs do not have this capacity.
What the state of Ohio is trying to do is to sedate with midazolam quickly knowing it will wear off quickly (within minutes of administration) while they load enough hydromorphone to cause deep sedation. The real problem with hydromorphone with folks that are on death row is it a synthetic morphine which inmates may have a high tolerance.
In my opinion this is a failed strategy and desperate strategy that will be inconsistent with varied results in any death row population.
Midazolam has only four hydrogen binding sites which it is why it is so short acting. There simply isn't enough potency to cause death in a short period of time.
Pentobarbital is not a choice drug for any addiction due to it's lack of availability in any street drug market. The chances of an inmate having been exposed to enough of pentobarbital to become resistant to it's effects is very minimal if not impossible. It is not the kind of drug prescribed for average folks. It is used in some instance of seizure disorders in children, but, rarely in adults. Primarily because drugs such as dilantin are non-narcotic for this purpose.
20 hours ago
...She said the state will turn to a combination of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone, for the November execution....
Versed (midazolam) is very short acting.
...Florida used midazolam along with two other drugs in an execution on October 15, but not with hydromorphone, he said.
According to the Food and Drug Administration database of drugs, Midazolam injections are marketed by a number of companies including Fresenius Kabi USA, a unit of the German drugmaker, and hydromorphone and midazolam are both marketed by Hospira Inc and Akorn....
How is it that Florida is getting away with this?
Hydromorphone is a synthetic morphine. None of these drugs even closely resembles or mimics pentobarbital. One of the uses of pentobarbital is to control seizures which would be important during an execution.
Pentobarbital is in a group of drugs called barbiturates(click here) (bar-BIT-chur-ates). Pentobarbital slows the activity of your brain and nervous system.
Pentobarbital is used short-term to treat insomnia. Pentobarbital is also used as an emergency treatment for seizures, and to cause you to fall asleep for surgery.
Pentobarbital may also be used for other purposes not listed in this medication guide.
Neither midazolam or hydromorphone even come close to pentobarbital in chemical structure or effectiveness in sedation.
It is the long chain of hydrogen-carbon bonds which make pentobarbital effective. It avails more hydrogens for interaction with the body and there for highly effective in sedation and control of seizures and breathing. The other drugs do not have this capacity.
Hydromorphone has less availability of hydrogen atoms to accommodate body chemistry. The hydromorphone molecule only has eight hydrogen bonding sites while pentobarbital has seventeen. Structurally the hydrogen bonds cause bonding in many organic compounds which these drugs are, but, the less available hydrogen bonds the less reactive the chemical is. At this point I'd have to say there is not a known effectiveness in the sedation of hydromorphone in combination with midazolam to state this is not cruel and humane.
What the state of Ohio is trying to do is to sedate with midazolam quickly knowing it will wear off quickly (within minutes of administration) while they load enough hydromorphone to cause deep sedation. The real problem with hydromorphone with folks that are on death row is it a synthetic morphine which inmates may have a high tolerance.
In my opinion this is a failed strategy and desperate strategy that will be inconsistent with varied results in any death row population.Midazolam has only four hydrogen binding sites which it is why it is so short acting. There simply isn't enough potency to cause death in a short period of time.
Pentobarbital is not a choice drug for any addiction due to it's lack of availability in any street drug market. The chances of an inmate having been exposed to enough of pentobarbital to become resistant to it's effects is very minimal if not impossible. It is not the kind of drug prescribed for average folks. It is used in some instance of seizure disorders in children, but, rarely in adults. Primarily because drugs such as dilantin are non-narcotic for this purpose.
The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy (TWCP) (click here) opened in September, 2008, offering compounded medications to patients in The Woodlands, Texas area. We specialize in preparing customized medications based on your doctor's prescription to meet all patient specific needs.
This is the compounding pharmacy in Texas preparing ? a drug ? that is used for executions. I would demand knowing the process and the final chemical structure of the product used. I don't buy it that they should be operating in secrecy. If they have a special process then there is the US Patent Office protecting their rights to it. There is something odd about all this.
It appears to me there is a real efficacy issue in regard to executions using these drugs. Where is the guarantee they will work in the way intended and consistently. Besides that where is the LD50 testing and the FDA approval of these designer drugs?
It appears to me there is a real efficacy issue in regard to executions using these drugs. Where is the guarantee they will work in the way intended and consistently. Besides that where is the LD50 testing and the FDA approval of these designer drugs?
