WHEN IT COMES TO KILLING MERCY CUTS BOTH WAYS......

The Texas lethal injection protocol utilizes three (3) drugs:
1. Sodium thiopental (Sodium Pentothal) is used to induce unconsciousness;
2. Pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) to cause muscle paralysis and respiratory arrest; and
3. Potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Well now there is a shortage of Sodium Pentothal in Texas.
The anti-death penalty folks are in full celebratory mode............a moratorium on the death penalty by default! 
The logic parallels Obama's moratorium on off-shore drilling.

Opponents of lethal injection believe that it is not actually painless as practiced in the United States because the thiopental component is an ultra-short acting barbiturate that "may" wear off (anesthesia awareness) and lead to consciousness and an uncomfortable death wherein the inmate is unable to express his discomfort because he has been rendered paralyzed by the paralytic agent, Pavulon.
I wonder how many inmates were interviewed to reach that conclusion?

The anti-death penalty folks argue that:
1. sodium thiopental is typically used as an induction agent and not used in the maintenance phase of surgery because of its short acting nature;
2. pancuronium bromide dilutes the thiopental and (since the inmate is paralyzed) also prevents the inmate from expressing pain;
3. inmates are administered an insufficient level of thiopental owing to the rapid redistribution of the drug out of the brain to other parts of the body.
4. the method of administration is flawed since the personnel administering the lethal injection lack expertise in anesthesia and increase the risk of failing to induce unconsciousness;
5. the dose of sodium thiopental must be customized to each individual patient instead of being restricted to a set protocol; and
6. the remote administration results in an increased risk that insufficient amounts of the lethal injection drugs enter the bloodstream.
7. and if those reasons are not enough, the Hippocratic Oath precludes Doctors from administering a lethal injection.

The hypothesized conclusion implies that the effect of dilution or improper administration of thiopental causes the inmate to die an agonizing death through suffocation due to the paralytic effects of pancuronium bromide and the intense burning sensation caused by potassium chloride..........that the procedure employed is designed to create the appearance of serenity and a painless death, rather than actually providing it.

The Hippocratic Oath was first recited more than 400 years before the birth of Christ. It states, inter alia, “A Doctor will give no deadly drug to any, though it be asked of him, nor will he counsel such, and especially he will not aid a woman to procure abortion”.

Unfortunately, we live in an age when pledges of duty and fidelity of the kind found in the Oath are fast becoming passé...

The text of the Hippocratic Oath has been modified many times through the ages. Contemporary versions, routinely adopted in medical-school graduation exercises and similar context do not contain the prohibitions against surgery, abortion, or accepting fees for teaching medicine, and also omit the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide. In short, neither the Hippocratic Oath nor classical tradition provides a compelling ethical or professional prohibition of physician-assisted death.

Jay Chapman, the creator of lethal injection, said, "It never occurred to me when we set this up that we’d have complete idiots administering the drugs."

Well Mr. Chapman I submit that we have complete idiots complicating a simple issue.

The Walls Unit in Huntsville Texas houses the death chamber......it is NOT a surgical suite in The Texas Medical Center.......if it were, routine surgical procedures would, no doubt, be held Unconstitutional under the, "cruel and unusual punishment" language of the Eighth Amendment.

Common Sense alternatives Huntsville can substitute for the Sodium Pentothal Trifecta:
1. employ a competent anesthetist to use the same general anesthesia protocol prescribed for major surgical procedures.......and there won't be the complication of post-op pain management;
2. use the same pharmacological agents Obama's death panels promote for the unwanted elderly;
3. re-institute the gallows---since snapping the little necks of unborn children in their mother's womb and suctioning their brains out doesn't constitute, "cruel and unusual punishment"; we shouldn't have a conflict.
4. strap the inmate in a jihadist jacket and call the C-4 wired cell phone............the list is endless.

Our mortality demands that all of us will die one day; but few as painlessly as the inmate whose soul leaves earth by way of the Huntsville Death Chamber.
The murdered victims whose breath was stolen and the pure innocence of those dismembered before their first breath was ever taken are the ones who suffer a "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" in their ironic end..........NOT the needled inmate.