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.
Why the hell don’t we just swap their air supply with nitrogen? No medical knowledge needed, no pharmacy needed. Considering the number of engineers in the defense industry they don’t exactly have a Hippocratic oath. Most of air is nitrogen so your body doesn’t fight it. You just feel stupid and loopy and high like losing cabin pressure in a airplane. CO2 or Helium would work as well.
Orphan crushing machine moment.
Just abolish the death penalty.
Sometime, as a little treat for yourself, see if you can huff the whiff of nearly pure CO² gasthat forms in the neck of a coke bottle when it is first opened.
That little whisp of vapor.
It’s neat to see how carbon dioxide feels to breathe.
Why dont you just stop behaving like barbarians and give an end to this practice?
They botch that too. The few times they’ve done it the prisoner ends up suffocating to death because they don’t vacate the CO2
Abolish the death penalty
CO2 makes you panic, that would be horrific.
nitrogen would also be inhuman, because gas is associated with the gas chambers.
Exactly what I was thinking! Helium, yes. They actually use it for unlicensed euthanasia.
Nitrogen is preferred. Your body can detect elevated CO2 levels and make you start to gasp breath. Helium would make the person’s voice go squeaky. I don’t think anyone involved wants the condemned shouting in a Mickey Mouse voice before they die.
CO2, absolutely no! Elevated carbonic acid in your blood causes a very visceral reaction.
We think this would humane, but we dont actually know is my understanding.
Not that this was humane either.
Edit: i think you meant CO, not CO2.