Marcos Freire de Andrade Neves: Pharmaceutical Necrosocialities: The Life-Death Worlds of Sodium Pentobarbital

Datum
12. Novem­ber 2024 

Hybrid lec­ture

Mar­cos Freire de Andrade Neves: „Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Necroso­cial­i­ties: The Life-Death Worlds of Sodi­um Pentobarbital”
Tues­day, Novem­ber 12th , 2024; 6.15 p.m.
Iwale­wa­haus, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bam­berg and online

To join online: https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/68704193175?pwd=IBcVqZXmGxm6ufAJobky2w4GarZ0lp.1

(Meet­ing-ID: 687 0419 3175; Ken­ncode: 772096)

Abstract:
Orig­i­nal­ly syn­the­sised in the 1930s as a seda­tive and sleep­ing aid, sodi­um pen­to­bar­bi­tal (SP) gained pop­u­lar­i­ty as a wide­ly used bar­bi­tu­rate but soon became asso­ci­at­ed with numer­ous acci­den­tal over­dos­es and sui­cides. As aware­ness of its dan­gers grew, SP was large­ly replaced by ben­zo­di­azepines, which car­ried a low­er risk of over­dose and addic­tion. Despite this, SP con­tin­ues to be used in med­ical set­tings, par­tic­u­lar­ly for treat­ing epilep­sy and oth­er con­di­tions. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, it is pre­cise­ly its high over­dose poten­tial that makes SP the drug of choice for death-induc­ing pro­ce­dures, includ­ing assist­ed dying in Switzer­land and lethal injec­tions in the U.S. This trans­for­ma­tion high­lights SP’s shift from a med­ical tool to a sub­stance pri­mar­i­ly val­ued for its lethal­i­ty. This talk explores the life-death worlds of SP, analysing how its life-cycle inter­sects with his­tor­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly sit­u­at­ed forms of gov­er­nance and emerg­ing necroso­cial­i­ties. The glob­al cir­cu­la­tion and local appli­ca­tions of SP reveal three crit­i­cal ten­sions that under­pin the life-death worlds of SP. First, as a phar­makon, SP embod­ies the dual poten­tial to both kill and heal, empha­sis­ing its ambiva­lent role as a life-sav­ing drug in med­ical con­texts and a death-induc­ing agent in assist­ed dying and state exe­cu­tions. Sec­ond, there is the ten­sion between SP as a commodity—shaped by mar­ket dynam­ics, legal loop­holes, and vary­ing lev­els of regulation—and its sta­tus as a con­trolled sub­stance, whose dis­tri­b­u­tion and use are tight­ly reg­u­lat­ed or even crim­i­nalised in cer­tain con­texts. Third, the ten­sion between vol­un­tary and coerced uses of SP, where it facil­i­tates indi­vid­ual agency in assist­ed dying but also serves as a tool of state pow­er and pun­ish­ment in exe­cu­tions, reflects broad­er socio-polit­i­cal dynam­ics of choice ver­sus con­trol. These com­pet­ing forces of choice and con­trol, care and pun­ish­ment, high­light SP’s ambiva­lence and its entan­gle­ment in the social, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al nego­ti­a­tions of life and death.