Lethal Injection: How Deadly Drugs Save Lives

(CBS/AP) Are the drugs used for lethal injection bad for your health? The short answer is clearly yes.

They certainly were for Teresa Lewis, the mentally challenged woman who was put to death Thursday in Virginia for putting a hit on her husband and stepson.

Her executioner was a triple cocktail of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

But the drugs also have life-saving purposes.

Sodium thiopental is an anesthetic sometimes used to put patients into a medically induced coma. This is important for severe burn victims or anyone whose body needs to rest after severe trauma. 

Unconsciousness generally occurs within a minute of receiving the drug intravenously.

Next comes pancuronium bromide. It is a muscle relaxant that doctors use to relax patients bodies during surgery or to help put a breathing tube down a struggling patient's throat. Its use is controversial in lethal injections because some fear the drug's paralyzing effect can mask suffering - making it hard to determine if the current cocktail is the most humane.

The final drug is potassium chloride. It doesn't have many medical uses, but on rare occasions, it is used for medical abortions. Oddly, in extremely small doses it can also be used as a sodium-free salt substitute (don't try to use this yourself).

All three drugs are used for lethal injections of a different kind - euthanasia, which in many countries is considered a form of mercy rather than retribution.

Teresa Lewis was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m. Thursday. Before she died, she said to the daughter of her victim, "I want Kathy to know that I love her and I'm very sorry."

She became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century.

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