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You have to hand it to the state of Ohio. They’ve finally come into modernity. No longer any nasty triple-injection executions for them. Ohio is now using Sodium Thiopental (otherwise known as Sodium Pentobarbitone, trade names – Nembutal, Euthatal) to see off their unwanted criminals.

I used Euthatal for years. Not personally, on myself, you’ll understand. Part of the more unpleasant side of working with animals was the occasional need for euthanasia. Euthatal provides a painless descent into death through anesthesia. Administered correctly, into a vein, it only takes two or three seconds to do its work. I’ve known owners regard me in amazement as their beloved old dog or cat stared lifelessly back at them, and ask incredulously, “Has he gone?”

When an animal dies so peacefully that its owner doesn’t even notice it passing, that’s humane enough for me.

I don’t care to dwell on the large number of creatures British society caused me to execute. The aged, terminally ill, or severely injured, never caused any qualms. The abandoned, unwanted, otherwise fit and healthy, always left a nasty taste in the mouth. Far more than if I’d euthanized their owners.

Intravenous injection is not for the inexperienced. If you’ve ever been to the lab of your local hospital when the technician who takes your blood sample is suffering an off-day, you’ll know what I mean. And compared to a dog, or cat, human beings have big veins.

While in my late teens, I joined the staff of Liverpool University’s Veterinary Anatomy department as an animal technician. My job was to care for the laboratory animals used in what is frequently referred to today as ‘vivisection’. Then, it was veterinary research.

Government policy demanded all animals used for research be euthanized once the experiment was concluded. Part of my job was to end their lives with the least suffering possible.

Rabbits were often used for research, and the most convenient area for injection was in the ear. As there’s little fur on the underside of a rabbit’s ear, it was easy to see the vein even though it’s not much thicker than a human hair. We used ultra-fine needles, and I soon became adept at this delicate task, rarely missing or blowing a vein.

Euthatal is used by veterinarians regularly for every creature from a mouse to a horse. Each will respond quickly to the drug, though the amounts required to be administered vary, of course. A mouse requires less than one milliliter, a horse anything up to one hundred milliliters. Frankly, I’m wary of using it on a horse that’s still standing. The carotid vein in the neck is standard for injection, and a horse will invariably fall forwards as it loses consciousness, likely taking you with it. Most veterinarians opt for shooting.

It was with some concern, then, that I read of the recent Ohio execution of 51 year old Kenneth Biros.

According to the BBC website:

The total process of Biros’ execution lasted for about 43 minutes, AP said, adding that the execution team took about 30 minutes to find a suitable vein for the insertion of the needle.”^[1]

Caring, is perhaps the most important quality needed by anyone handling a syringe. That, and lots of practice. It’s not difficult to become skilled with a hypodermic, ask any heroin addict, but aptitude rapidly fades when caring for the patient diminishes.

Did anyone care about Kenneth Biros? No-one seems to question why it took so long for him to die:

Biros was pronounced dead about 10 minutes after the injection was administered, the Associated Press news agency reports.” [my italics]

Why does it take a man ten minutes to die, when a horse can be euthanized in under one minute?

Could the fact that doctors are not allowed to perform the procedure on death-row prisoners have something to do with it?

Some years ago, a colleague and dear friend ‘borrowed’ a drip stand and bag, and one hundred milliliters of Euthatal, from the animal hospital where he worked. That night he settled himself in his armchair, wrote a short poem detailing why he was leaving this earth, and inserted the drip needle into a vein in his wrist. He was dead when found the next morning.

Back in July 2008, ABC News ran an article entitled, “Tourists Trek to Mexico for ‘Death in a Bottle'”. The journalists accompanied an Australian man, Don Flounders, as he and his wife traveled to Mexico. Flounders had advanced mesothelioma, and no wish to die a miserable, lingering, death. He went to Mexico to buy Euthatal on the black market, illegal without veterinarian prescription in both America and Australia .^[2]

Given the facts, perhaps its time America curtailed its bloodlust for criminal executions. It’s proved time and time again how inept it is at carrying them out in any but a grossly inhumane fashion.

Given the facts, perhaps its time America made it easier, for those who need the means to end their own lives should terminal illness make it unbearable, to obtain that means without recourse to a black market in Mexican drugs the U.S. federal government arrogantly condemns.

Meanwhile, Ohio continues with the struggle to justify its wrongs, by trying to make them appear right.

^{[1] “Ohio carries out first US execution by single injection” BBC, December 8th 2009}

^{[2] “Tourists Trek to Mexico for ‘Death in a Bottle'” ABC News, July 31st 2008}

Filed under: Inhumane euthanasia

The new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan involves sending another 30,000 troops up against highly trained and motivated Taliban insurgents in some of the most difficult fighting terrain on the planet.

The success of this misguided enterprise, already entering its ninth year without serious gains by either side, is dependent on the U.S. military’s new counter insurgency strategy, as shown below. (Click on image to enlarge in new window).

One has to wonder how much time and resource has gone into drawing up this piece of fine art that could well be worth millions of dollars if sold at Sotherby’s as an abstract plate of spaghetti, but bears no relation to the reason America first invaded Afghanistan – to capture that elusive Muslim Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden.

Still, if it turns out no-one can comprehend this spider’s web of bureaucratic nonsense, and all else fails, they can always send it to the government department that’s handling the economic stimulus package.

Change a few names, add a couple of dozen stations, and it would make a very workable plan for the new U.S. railroad system so urgently needed in this country.

I wonder if it was devised by Halliburton?

Filed under: Gone to war

We all know the United States is looking a bit rocky these days – what with the recession, those fatcat bankers bailed out by the taxpayer, only to continue paying themselves obscene bonuses; two foreign wars draining the US Treasury of the few cents the bankers left behind; Sarah Palin likely to become president in 2012…….

Still, if the worst happened Canada’s only a few hours drive away. We could all scoot across the border and settle there. It’s a lovely country, I believe. A wonderful health service, friendly people, the sort of place where morals matter and human beings are more important than ‘making a quick buck’. Not at all like the old U.S. of A.. Right?

Right. Well, at least, I thought it was right. Then I opened up the British Guardian newspaper’s website, and read this:

Until now I believed that the nation which has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.”

I’m a great fan of George Monbiot. He’s one of the most environmentally active journalists in the world. His research is impeccable. If George writes something, you can be darned sure it’s true. So, has he lost his mind? Canada, an environmental villain?

Sadly, it’s true. The Canadian government, controlled by the oil-tar barons of Alberta, are turning the beautiful nation of Canada into what Monbiot describes as, “……a cruel and thuggish place.”

Why? There’s a simple answer. Canada is developing the world’s second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, of pristine forests and marshes, will be dug up, unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailing ponds, some of which are so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta’s tar sands operation is the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.”

Canada was a signatory to the Kyoto Treaty on climate change. As Monbiot points out:

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced that it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.”

The plain truth is that Canada has been kidnapped by the corporates. Shell and BP (among others) stand to make billions from the Alberta tar sands, but to do so means creating an environmental catastrophe. Just as in America, the oil barons are fighting tooth and nail to prevent climate change legislation, and the Canadian government is the tool they’re using to achieve that end.

Next week, a vital climate summit takes place in Copenhagen. Until I read George Monbiot’s Guardian article, had anyone said to me that Canada was the most likely nation to scupper those talks, I’d have laughed in their face.

George Monbiot has said exactly that. I’m not laughing.

Read Monbiot’s full article HERE, including his comprehensive references, and I’ll bet you won’t be laughing either.

Filed under: Black gold rush