The Death of Sodium Pentothal: The Rise and Fall of an Anesthetic Turned Lethal

Abstract

Abstract For nearly a century, sodium pentothal was the undisputed king of anesthetics. Anesthesiologists were not, however, the sole consumers of pentothal, as psychiatrists used it to treat acute anxiety during psychoanalysis. The associated drug-induced inhibitions were attractive not only to psychotherapists, but also to a new generation of policing and Cold War espionage searching for the elusive truth serum. Cameo appearances of pentothal in media, film, and popular culture propagated the anesthetic’s negative public image. While legal challenges to the admissibility of pentothal-induced confessions and congressional investigations of clandestine truth serum programs may have tainted the popular anesthetic, it was pentothal’s widespread adaptation as part of the lethal injection cocktail that finally killed the king of anesthetics as pharmaceutical companies around the world refused to manufacture what had been transformed into a largely unprofitable drug, associated with capital punishment.