You can't kill a cat with pancuronium bromide in Tennessee, but you can kill a criminal. In his article Mark Essig explains that the drug paralyzes muscles, but not nerves, so if you're on the receiving end, you may be wide awake as you die painfully. Advocacy groups and medical experts want about 30 states all told to change the way they administer lethal injections, "thereby bringing euthanasia protocols for human in line with those of domestic animals." (The NYT has archived this article already.)

Essig goes on to make the larger point, though, that ever since we've used capital punishment in this country, various groups have tried to get rid of it by pointing out its cruelty. Instead of getting rid of it, though, the folks administering it have simply found new ways to kill people--more humanely--temporarily mollifying the anti-execution crowd until they can find a problem with the new method. That's how we've "progressed" from hangings, to the electric chair, to gassing, to lethal injections.

Now, Essig points out though, "Death penalty opponents are realizing that scientific execution methods, ceaselessly refined, simply mask the barbarity of killing."