Euthanasia drug can cause excruciating death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An autopsy revealed that Wesley Purkey, who died by capital punishment on July 16, 2020, died an excruciating death. 

This article does not focus on capital punishment but rather the evidence that lethal injection death by pentobarbital (nembutal), a drug used for euthanasia and assisted suicide, is not a peaceful death.

According to an article by Candace Sutton and published by News.com.au:

An autopsy performed on Purkey, it was revealed today, revealed he suffered “severe bilateral acute pulmonary oedema” and “frothy pulmonary oedema in trachea and main stem bronchi”.

This means fluid quickly entered Purkey’s lungs and trachea, causing “a near-drowning” sensation which a medical expert described as “among the most excruciating feelings known to man”.

The information from the autopsy has become public by the legal team that is trying to prevent the capital punishment death of Keith Nelson. Sutton reported:

Dr Gail Van Norman, a medical expert retained by Nelson’s lawyers to interpret Purkey’s autopsy, said the flash flood-like filling of Purkey’s lungs could only occur when a person was still alive.

“It is a virtual medical certainty, that most, if not all, prisoners will experience excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation from (the drug) pentobarbital,” she said.

I am concerned about the many people who die excruciating assisted deaths with Pentobarbital. 

In the past few years I have published several articles explaining how death by euthanasia or assisted suicide is not necessarily quick and is often painful.

Nembutal is also promoted by euthanasia activist, Dr Philip Nitschke, who promotes the sale of lethal drugs via the internet. Nitschke is connected to suicide websites and he is known to be importing suicide kits into the United States. Many people are purchasing, through Nitschke, lethal drugs via the internet and then die an excruciating death. No matter how its justified, this is not a dignified death.

• Prolonged painful assisted suicide deaths (Link).
• The connection between lethal injection and capital punishment (Link).
• Many assisted suicide deaths are slow and painful (Link). 
• Is lethal injection inhumane? (Link).
• Euthanasia drug execution drug controversy (Link).