my brit cow-orkers are SHOOK
Tell them you don’t even use water, just dunk the bag in the hot milk.
Alabama, blazing new trails in cruel and unusual punishment (on the same guy they tried and failed to execute by lethal injection two years ago), decided to suffocate a guy with nitrogen gas over 22 minutes and six Supreme Court justices (guess which ones!) were like “yeah we’re good with this”
wtf I don’t know much about the subject but seems like they just cooking up wilder and wilder stuff. Seems veterinarians can reliably and peacefully kill all manner of animals and states are just like hold my beer I’m going to try something
Supposedly if you just inhale 100% nitrogen your body doesn’t know there’s no oxygen and you just pass out until you die, at least that was the theory. Guess they uh, don’t have all the bugs worked out yet.
Interesting, that seems hard to believe but I assume must have something to it if they had reason to believe this was a good idea. I would have thought blood oxygen level dropping would still trigger urge to breathe. Honestly cant even remember now if it’s blood oxygen dropping or CO2 rising that accounts for that urge. I guess if was the CO2 that still going to get exchanged in pure nitrogen so you could become hypoxic without being hypercarbic.
I was reading about this a couple weeks ago and it sounded like they were just using a small mask like one used for oxygen. Those aren’t sealed, so he would be getting oxygen leaking in and thus prolonging the suffocation. They knew that was a possible outcome but went ahead with the plan anyway.
Also, the comments on that tweet are mostly deplorable, as expected from elons rightwing shit hole of a site.
It’s the CO2 rising, here’s Destin from Smarter Every Day demonstrating:
Respiratory drive is driven mostly by carbon dioxide levels. There is an oxygen component as well too. The oxygen issue has to be much lower though.
It’s not hard to kill someone medically. Have someone competent get IV access. Give a shit ton of versed (sedation 1), propofol (sedation 2), vecuronium (paralytic) and the potassium (causes fatal arrhythmia)
The horror stories I’ve heard about seemed like it was iv access failure or giving the meds out of order. Also now they don’t have access to the good meds anymore.
Why even have to bother with IVs though, I assume vets just give some combo of barbiturates and opioids IM
IVs allow for much more predictable onset and effects. Barbiturates could work for the sedation, but there’s no auto death dose for them as a lot of people will have tolerance
Seems like they have no issue giving enough phenobarbital alone to kill a horse but does look they do it IV
I’m guessing there’s no alcoholic horses with years of gaba receptor down regulation too lol
Maybe I’m giving the security protocols of death row too much credit
Benzo tolerance applies here too.
Phenobarb is a great med… I’ve just given insane doses to people in withdrawal
Looks they giving the horsey about 100mg/kg, that would certainly make you an ER legend to pull that off haha
I thought the drug providers were stopping supply for execution.
A pillow over the face is probably better than nitrogen.
Yeah loading dose is 10mg/kg with 260mg boluses every 15 min until things are controlled
You can give crazy doses of benzos and barbs though.
ICU was overflowing once so some guy got 100 of Ativan on the floor over 18hrs, nurses weren’t amused but I figured if ever stopped breathing ICU would be forced to take him. Was a year or two before barbs were really in style again so ER wasn’t loading folks.
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For people in extreme status epilepticus I’ve seen the icu start someone on a 100mg per hour versed drip while intubated with pressors available.
Took him like 5 days to wake up after they turned it off iirc
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