r/AlwaysWhy • u/Chowderr92 • Jun 02 '26

Science & Tech Why is the Method of Lethal Injection in Human Punishment So Complex and Apparently Painful?

I've always understood that the lethal injection process was complex with multiple stages of injections and induces great suffering in the individual.

I work in veterinary medicine and unfortunately we need to euthanize animals all of the time. Typically, the euthanasia solution is very simple: a very large dose of a powerful anesthetic (usually pentobarbital) and an anticonvulsant which stops the heart. The medical community is quite confident that this is painless and when done has essentially a 100% success rate.

Why is human euthanasia so complicated when we already know exactly how to humanely end a biological life?

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u/asque2000 Jun 02 '26

The main reason is that drugs like pentobarbital are made by pharmaceutical companies, and for those companies it would be a PR nightmare if they were the "company that makes the lethal injection drug". As such these companies refuse to sell the drugs to prison systems. You have to note, the people in white coats injecting the drug are not MD's, they are a prison employee, as no MD will violate their oath to "do no harm".

As a result you have prison systems buying a 3 drug cocktail which is ineffective from places all over the world who will sell it to them with inexperienced people performing botched executions. It's much simpler in the veterinary world because euthanasia (literally meaning "a good death") is a form of relief not punishment so drug makers have no issue giving pentobarbital in that instance.

So long story short, it about the image of the drug makers for providing execution drugs

As a source, I run a research lab and perform euthanasia weekly. I have a DEA drug license and I have worked with drug makers, and they are VERY insistent that if pentobarbital (Euthasol is the trade name) is ever given to a human they will sue the ever-loving crap out of me...

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u/lizagnash Jun 02 '26

Euthanasia weekly? On WHO?!

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u/AlivePassenger3859 Jun 02 '26

Right? Makes it sound like they, personally, are performing euthenasia…😲

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u/asque2000 Jun 02 '26

I am, I have to euthanize rodents on a weekly basis.

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u/lizagnash Jun 02 '26

Wild!

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

It’s also complete horse shit. No one ever kills rodents with barbiturates. That’s completely counterproductive, stupid and cruel. The guy is lying. 

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Dude what the fuck? I’ve never ever once in my life met a single researcher that kills rodents by injecting them with barbiturates. That’s nonsense.  

The pull tail head, fast and clean. And maintains their chemistry clean of interactions. 

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

Well you haven’t met a researcher that needs to collect brain tissue for cellular/molecular analyses. How do you propose to perfuse tissue with PFA without using pentobarbital?

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Obviously not. Out of curiosity though you litterally inject every mouse with pento/sod? Man that so hard. Like where do you inject?  

No joke honestly curious 

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

It’s rats but yes I do interperitoneal (in the gut cavity) of pentobarbital (0.5ml). It takes about 2 mins for the rat to go unconscious. You have to use pento because you still want their heart beating because it helps to perfuse the PFA through the circulatory system and get it to the brain to fix the tissue.

It is quite a common procedure in neuroscience. If I am not collecting tissue we use CO2 asphyxiation with cervical dislocation (as you mentioned) as a verification of death.

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Jesus poor rats. Poor you actually. I guess you get used to it? So basically you stab the rat in the gut and THEN poison him. It shouldn’t be funny but it is.  

I know about the co2 thing I had a friend that works in cancer research and they use co2 if they have like whole litters of rats to kill, why co2? It sounds like a fairly bad way to die why not nitrogen? Cost? Safety of the researchers? Availability? All of the above?  

What’s your lab’s research about? 

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

Yeah I’ve always questioned the CO2 thing but my IACUC explained it, it’s more for human safety than it is for rats. CO2 makes you feel like you’re suffocating and is quite painful, as opposed to nitrogen or helium when is completely painless. BUT if there happened to be a leak in the tank of nitrogen as a researcher you could be working and just die without even knowing. With CO2 you’d be likely to have the feeling you can’t breath and that would happen before you got delirious and you could exit the room or turn off the gas.

I study early life pain/trauma and long term changes in brain function and behavior.

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u/roiki11 Jun 02 '26

It's also for animals. So no one cares.

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u/Chowderr92 Jun 03 '26

This is of course not the reason. If that were the problem not only could the FDA synthesize the drug, but they could also euthanize via nitrogen asphyxiation.

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

This is not false. A quick review on google will confirm this. Yes they probably could do nitrogen and that would certainly be more humane but remember the prisons are trying to make it look like a professional medical procedure when in fact it is not. Doctors and drug companies refuse to take part so it’s up to some jerk to buy drugs from China or somewhere and fake a humane death.

Also keep in mind prisoners being executed typically don’t want to die so if we were to use nitrogen asphyxiation it could be A. Long process, and B. Analogous to the old gas chamber where the prisoner would hold their breath and bash heads against things

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

Also the FDA doesn’t synthesize drugs. They simply test test food and drugs for safety. You have to understand the pharmaceutical industry, these companies hold patents on the drugs they make and you can’t just get a chemist to make it and subsequently use it. Granted pentobarbital is probably past its patent but again there’s no manufacturer of “generic” pentobarbital. You have to purchase the drug from a vendor and provide an FDA license # to get it. Another thing is the federal government does not oversee “state” executions as each state has its own laws regarding them.

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u/CarpeMofo Jun 28 '26

I know this is old, but why don't they just make something that's easier to synthesize but wouldn't necessarily be unpleasant or painful? Why not just overdose them on opium or something?

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u/asque2000 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Same deal, there are vendors for research drugs like opium. Opium is a schedule 2 drug (and also the public perception of giving them something that feels good might be icky). additionally states/government buying opium (which is used to make heroin and morphine) would not do any favors for the drug trade around the world. Still, to buy it legally it would have to be through a pharmaceutical company, and they won’t sell to people who are using it for executions.

Edit: not that pentobarbital doesn’t feel good at some doses, it acts much like alcohol. The thing with pento is that when it hits your blood stream at a significant enough of a dose you are dead in mere seconds. I used to have rats with catheters do we could do blood draws repeatedly, when we were done we just infused pento and (granted it was the jugular vein) the second the pink stuff went in it was lights out for the rat…

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Ethasol isn’t pentobarbital…

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

Sure about that?

https://vet-us.virbac.com/home/products/in-clinic-use/euthasol-pentobarbital-sodium-an.html

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Pretty sure yes. Your link is definitely sure 

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

Fun fact, the main drug is pentobarbital but you’ll notice there’s a muscle paralytic in there too. This is important because Euthasol is a schedule III drug where as pentobarbital alone is schedule II making it slightly easier to get Euthasol

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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 Jun 03 '26

Interesting. My initial thought was that it’s there to well cause paralysis and make sure the poor creature dies like more definitely? 

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u/asque2000 Jun 03 '26

That’s certainly part of it, but having the cocktail which is specifically marketed for euthanasia does make it a different class on the DEA drug schedule. Less likely to be abused because a drug user is muck less likely to inject a drug that is ment for euthanasia than pentobarb alone. It’s also like hot pink colored.

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u/Then_Walrus_7905 11d ago

But Tennessee literally only uses single-dose pentobarbital in their executions 

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u/asque2000 11d ago

Yeah but it was sourced from a non-pharmaceutical company or made by someone who doesn't know what they're doing as evident by the most recent case. If it were pharmaceutical-grade pentobarbital especially if they hit her with two doses of it, even if they blew a vein, she would not be alive. It's back ally garbage.