The ongoing scramble by some states for lethal injection drugs has prompted a new campaign by activists to pressure drugmakers not to make their medications available. The undertaking is called the Pharmaceutical Hippocratic Oath, which drugmakers are being asked to sign and pledge that their medicines will be used to ‘help, not harm.’ So far, Lundbeck has agreed to participate and an effort is getting under way this week to prompt others to do the same. “Many drugmakers are unaware that prisons are using their products to kill. Some prisons go to great lengths to procure drugs for lethal injection with no concern for the interests or reputation of manufacturers,” Maya Foa, an investigator with Reprieve, a UK Charity that is organizing the campaign, tells us. “The pharmaceutical industry should be united in its opposition to the abuse” of its drugs.
