Sodium thiopental shortage threatens executions

"A shortage of a drug used in executions in the United States has sent U.S. states scrambling to find supplies, or alternative drugs. Among the 35 states in which capital punishment is legal, some--including Arizona and California--had been sourcing a key execution drug, sodium thiopental, through a company in London--until UK government officials put a stop to its export. The only U.S. company making the drug, which sought to move its manufacturing base to Italy, has now given up producing sodium thiopental because it cannot assure Italian officials that it won't be used for executions. 

The situation demonstrates that although pharmaceutical supply chains are global, the morals and mores of drug use are decidedly local. Will U.S. states be forced to stop executing their death-row inmates by a drug embargo?...

A standard three-drug sequence is used in the United States to execute prisoners condemned to death...  three drugs, to be administered in sequence: sodium thiopental to render the condemned unconscious; pancuronium bromide, to paralyze the body and lungs; and potassium chloride to stop the heart.  ..

In recent years, sodium thiopental has been used less and less often for anesthesia, as newer drugs have gained favor. For some time, all the sodium thiopental in the United States has come from a drug company called Hospira, based in Lake Forest, Ill. In the summer of 2009, Hospira had to suspend production of the drug. The company that made the active ingredient--which Hospira would not name, but US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records identify as Abbott Laboratories--stopped making it...

Meanwhile, companies and government officials in Germany have come together against supplying the United States with any sodium thiopental for executions, according to the Associated Press..."

More at Scientific American, via the New Shelton wet/dry.