California refuses to return execution drug to FDA [View all]
Source: SF Chronicle
California prison officials are defying a U.S. Food and Drug Administration order to return supplies of a foreign-made drug used in executions, saying they disagree with a federal judge's ruling that the drug was imported illegally without an FDA safety review.
The FDA, which also disagreed with the judge and argued that no such review is required, said Friday that it will appeal the ruling.
The dispute adds further uncertainty to the resumption of executions in California, blocked since 2006 by an order by another federal judge who found numerous flaws in the state's procedures for lethal injections.
The drug, sodium thiopental, is an anesthetic used by California and most other states to render a prisoner unconscious at the start of the execution process. After the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped production in 2009, California and several other states got new supplies from a British distributor of Austrian-made sodium thiopental.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/25/BA7N1ONQ81.DTL
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