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The Current Transcript for September 10, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Eyes are on the sky and see if another air strike is approaching. That's what hit the children, hit the people are concerned and in panic and are worried about

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Another day where they watch the sky for bombs. There was a time when Syrians looked toward the heavens for deliverance, either divine or Western. That war is seven and a half years old now. Few could have predicted that what began as an Arab revolution for democratic change, would see the authoritarian Assad government still in control. With most of the last holdouts gathered in one area, Idlib, for the last several days they've been fearing a final assault. They expect it is just a matter of time and we will hear about more of those spheres in just a moment. And then, remember the strong heartbroken angry reaction of Brazilians when fire ripped through their national museum in Rio and destroyed so many of their treasured cultural and historical artifacts? Well now they've got some optimistic ideas on what to do about all they lost.

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VOICE: We will resurrect. We will create everything again, but not the way that was.

AMT: A war didn't create their losses, it seemed government neglect did, but today we'll hear from a man who says they can learn from Baghdad's wartime cultural losses. And being the cradle of civilization, they've had a few of those. Here's some ideas on how to hold onto the past moving into the future, in half an hour. We're also talking about the limits of lethal injection today.

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VOICE 1: Do you have any last words, Poncelet?

VOICE 2: I just want to say I think killing is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's me or y'all or your government.

AMT: That's Sean Penn in the memorable film, Dead Man Walking. Those fighting the death penalty have a new strategy and it involves multinational pharmaceutical companies who don't like their products being used for state executions. There's lots of layers on that issue and you can hear more in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Ryerson student's morning routine: Checking whether her family in Idlib are still alive

Guests: Alaa Alakel, Anas Al-Kassem

SOUNDCLIP

[Protests]

VOICE: We are protesting to confirm that the Syrian revolution is still ongoing. We will reject any aggression towards the Syrian areas of Idlib.

AMT: Some of the sounds of defiant residents in the province of Idlib in northern Syria, the last rebel stronghold in the country. Russian and Syrian warplanes have been pummeling Idlib since last week. They resumed intensive strikes on the area yesterday. Idlib is bracing for an all out assault as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad tries to retake the region and end the civil war. There was hope that talks last Friday among Russia Iran and Turkey could find a way to avoid a bloodbath. Everyone left the table without agreeing on a cease fire on that one. The U.S. says it has evidence that Syrian government forces are preparing chemical weapons. Now caught in the middle are three million civilians, half of whom fled to Idlib, the country, the province and the city of the same name, from other areas of Syria. It was supposed to be safer there. Now they have nowhere else to go and they are preparing for the worst. Alper Kucuk is the deputy director general of the Turkish Red Crescent. It has teams on the ground in Idlib.

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VOICE: People are really worried about what's happening, particularly in the northern part of Hama and the southern part of Idlib, where there are massive air strikes. Only in last two days for example, six medical and civil facilities are attacked. People are in panic and they're worried about their life. Many of them are packing their stuff to go when parties start hitting there neighbourhood. You may have watched some videos where a father is teaching his children how to use a plastic bag against kind of chemicals released. So it is almost the school year is approaching in Syria, as well. That's what the children is trying to learn these days, rather than getting prepared to his or her school year.

AMT: Mr. Kucuk says the Turkish Red Crescent is stockpiling supplies along Turkey's Syrian border in preparation for large scale displacements. He is still hoping against hope that the main players will find a way to avert a full fledged assault.

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VOICE: What we can do best in our capacity is to be prepared for different scenarios and we have good level of stock in solidarity among the humanitarian partners, but we don't want to use them. We don't want those to be needed and we want all those who are in world or who have influence in this situation to be able to stop this because we don't see a military situation in a province where there are significantly larger numbers of babies than terrorists. It is impossible to conduct a military solution or a military operation without harming major civilian.

AMT: Well for Syrians living in Canada it has been, it is terrifying to watch friends and family under attack again. Alaa Alakel is from Kafr Nabl, which is about an hour outside of Idlib city. She is in Toronto because she's studying biomedical science at Ryerson University and she's with me in our studio. Hello.

ALAA ALAKEL: Hello. Good Morning.

AMT: What have you been hearing from your family still in Syria?

AA: Oh my God. It's like everybody is scared. Everybody's like doesn't know what's going to happen after like after one minute. Everybody live like his life just it's the minute.

AMT: And how many of your relatives are still there? Who's there?

AA: All my family. All of them. My dad, my mom, my sibling, even my sister's daughter.

AMT: And how easy is it to reach them, to speak to them? How do you manage?

AA: Oh. Like any connection, like any internet or connection by Syria. No. Nothing about the Syrian regime. We use Turkish wi-fi. So there is only wi-fi. So we can speak on the WhatsApp, Facebook.

AMT: When's the last time you spoke to them?

AA: Oh. Last Night.

AMT: And what did they say?

AA: It's just like sometimes they ignore it. They don't want me to be worried because I'm always what's happened? Did you find something to go out? Are you planning to go out and all the time the answer, where we gonna go? The border with Turkey is closed. And as you know, many people are dying on the border. So there is nowhere to go now.

AMT: And so how close are they to the airstrikes that have happened so far? What are they hearing?

AA: Oh my God. Each time the bomb come like my sister house is like beside her city and yesterday they have a bomb and the house was shaking. I was like what, we are OK as adult. Maybe adult can use to it. But what the kids? She has two kids. So when I was there, we used to put the music, put everything like loud when we know that they are planning that it's coming. So we just put the music, try to put, but no, it's like just my sister if they die, they will die happy.

AMT: What's it like for you to be here, while they're going through that, to be so far away?

AA: It's so hard. You wake up everyday, it's just like the routine, like imagine your routine everyday to wake up in the morning, just to take your phone and to check if your family still alive. And you, every day we walk in the street. We have the guilt with us. Like I have two guilt. For my friends who still in the prison and I'm now continuing my study and for that other people in Idlib like living nice life, peace, like nobody's hurting me. Everybody's nice and there's like they are waiting to die. You feel guilty is like why me. I am safe, why they are not?

AMT: I understand that before you came here to study, you were working in hospitals in Syria.

AA: Yeah I had. I was working with a civilian organization. The name I just know the name URB. We used a car to take a medication for the very like for village. They don't have any medical service. And we start by one car and some medication and then we opened the office. And even do a surgery for people who doesn't have the money. Most of them doesn't have the money.

AMT: And so when you talk about that, what sticks in your mind? What do you remember from that time that really stays with you?

AA: I remember like when I had like I started to work in the hospital, like with the organization. So the first bomb was like in the city beside us and it's so close. So they bombed it. Like the neighbourhood come down, like you can't see the neighbourhood. And I was so young, like I was like 20. And they brought like three kids. Their ages one and a half to two, two and a half. So there is nothing to hold like to take them from the street because we had too many, too many injured people. So I just was running and holding people, taking them to surgery. But there is no doctor, no staff, not even equipment, like we have nothing. So the doctor was just checking if they are alive or die. So he doesn't need to waste time. So I was holding the kids between my arms and he said he's die. It's so hard. He was so young.

[Crying]

AMT: I'm sorry to bring all that up again. Alaa, you said you were 20, when you started doing that. How old are you now?

AA: 25.

AMT: This war has going on for seven and a half years.

AA: Yes.

AMT: What will your family do if there is the full scale assault on Idlib that the government has warned of?

AA: They just going to die. There is nowhere, no way to save them.

AMT: They can't get out?

AA: No. If Turkey didn't open the border, it's like we should expect like 2 million people die at least.

AMT: Turkey has said.

AA: They are not going to open it.

AMT: It won't take any more refugees.

AA: No.

AMT: What do you think the international community should be doing?

AA: They should stop talking and do something for these people. They're not terrorists. They're civilian people. We went to street for freedom. For our free life. They're very good people. It's my people. I know them. And they are very educated. All of them. They know what they are doing. When they went to street, they take our flag. It's not black flag. They should do something. It's not hard to stop Russia and Iran from this. I don't see the regime anymore because he's not there. He's not there. He just do what Russia and Iran and the other country want.

AMT: Alaa, it's important to hear your voice. Thank you for coming in today.

AA: Thank you so much.

AMT: Alaa Alakel is from Kafr Nabl, which is outside of Idlib city in Idlib province in Syria. She is in Canada studying Biomedical Science at Ryerson University. The prospect of a full scale attack on Idlib has medical professionals worried about how they'll cope. My next guest is a Syrian-Canadian doctor who has traveled back and forth to Syria many times to treat the wounded. Dr. Anas Al-Kassem is co-founder of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. It provides humanitarian and medical assistance to all Syrian victims of war and it makes the point, it does that regardless of their religion, ethnicity or political affiliation. Dr. Anas Al-Kassem is in Simcoe, Ontario. Hi.

ANAS AL-KASSEM: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What are you thinking as you listened to my last guest?

AAK: It's really depressing. You know, I went through this. I see these people on the ground when I go to Idlib. I went to Idlib maybe 13 time, Anna Maria. I understand. I know the town exactly where Alaa is from. I've been there several times. We built a hospital, even close by to her town. And this was bombarded just two days ago. Three hospitals actually were bombarded in that area in the last 24 hours, Anna Maria. So it is very depressing. I don't know what to say.

AMT: And so what are you hearing from the people that you can reach? What are they thinking because we know that there is a bigger assault that is apparently coming?

AAK: It's going to be probably the largest assault on any civilian population we ever witnessed in the last seven years of this war. The problem we have 3.5 million people trapped in that area and the issue Anna Maria is that not only the original people. Idlib had only 1.5 million before all the revolution or a prize or whatever you want to call it happened in 2011. Now it has a three and a half million. So near 2 million people are already displaced. These are people coming from Ghouta, from Homs from areas were completely wiped out. And now we're asking them to be displaced again from their camps to another camp close to the Turkish border. The situation is very, very dire on the ground.

AMT: And how equipped are the hospitals or the medical clinics then?

AAK: Well it is reasonably well equipped. The reason is that Turkey, to be honest with you, opened the door, even they closed it on the refugees in just in the last year because they took like 3 million refugees eventually. Like many neighbouring countries did, but eventually they opened the door for us for all medical relief organization. So we do have reasonable good lots of the medical supplies, the blood banks and things like that, but the issue is that when the bombardment starts on the hospital, like the town where Alaa coming from, there's a small hospital beside her. When this hospital is wiped out then the whole region, we have like a hundred thousand population, they have to go to another hospital. That becomes very unsafe and we don't have enough crew to take these patients safely from a hospital or medical center to medical center. They even targeted many times the regime, airstrikes, whether it's Russian or Syrian, they targeted ambulances of ours and other medical relief organizations. And that's the big issue that we're really challenging in the coming few days.

AMT: And you know that government officials say they are basically bombing what they believe are terrorist sites.

AAK: Well I mean this has been always a lie. I mean maybe you can always you know ISIS group here and there in one corner, but it doesn't mean you wipe out the whole country and then you get rid of millions of people and you force them to be displaced or leave their houses. I've seen many children. I've seen tons of women being injured. I mean these are not terrorist people. Unfortunately they're backed up by certain countries and the international community really did not do much to the people in Syria.

AMT: We know there have been similar attacks on Homs and Aleppo and Ghouta. What kind of toll does that take on the medical professionals who are trying to help?

AAK: It is very hard. I lived in Aleppo when they were throwing over these kind of barrel and bombarding the city. I was there in 2013. It is horrible. It's horrible, Anna Maria I mean one day I remember I was doing surgery helping the colleagues there and then the hospital was attacked. Then they told me just to stay where you are. You can't move now. I said what do you mean you can't move. Because it won't be safe to move. The rebels will be thrown in on the ground. I said OK. And within a few minutes we had to carry on the surgery because we have a human being in our hands that we're trying to save her life. It is a horrible situation. I mean what kind of good safe environment to protect these medical crews and these physicians and nurses on the ground.

AMT: What keeps you going back in there?

AAK: I'm a physician. I'm a surgeon in training. I'm train in Calgary. I have a luxury life here in Canada. I mean yes we have some economic strains and some issues sometimes, but at large we get all medical equipment and supplies that we ask for. And I feel we have to give back to these people. They've been oppressed for seven years. They went through hardships and really very difficult life. And I think these refugees and displaced people they need our help and we can provide whatever we can even in limited resources.

AMT: If Turkey will not take any more refugees, what kind of humanitarian impact is that going to have?

AAK: It will be a real crisis. I think if Turkey closes the border and I don't blame them. I mean you have in a country three million people already, how much you going to take more? But if they won't take more, the problem would be, we're going to see a real crisis. A real disaster that we haven't witnessed in other regions because there were always pushing everyone from their own land to Idlib and now they're going to attack Idlib. Where the people are going to go?

AMT: Seven and a half years on in this civil war, did you expect that it would come to this? That the Assad government would still be in power?

AAK: Not at all. I thought it was going to be like Tunisia and other countries. Maybe six months get rid of tyranny and have a democracy and freedom like we have in Canada. But it took the people really seven years with probably more than one million people died. Half of them are children. It's just horrible what has happened. We hope we're going to see an end to this soon.

AMT: Dr. Al-Kassem, thanks for speaking with me.

AAK: Well, thank you very much for having me.

AMT: Dr. Anas Al-Kassem is with the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. We reached him in Simcoe, Ontario. I want to let you know about an interview coming up Wednesday on The Current. It is with the journalist, Bob Woodward. He's got a new book out. It's called, Fear, and it is rocking Washington D.C. to its core right now. Of course, in 1972 Bob Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein followed the trail of a break-in at the Watergate Hotel and unearthed a scandal that led to then US President Richard Nixon's resignation. Now with US President Donald Trump at the centre of a growing scandal, Bob Woodward has been digging in again. The two spoke last month in a phone call posted by The Washington Post.

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VOICE 1: The political system and you and my business is being tested and I take it very seriously. I've done books on eight presidents, going back to Nixon, Obama.

VOICE 2: Right.

VOICE 1: And I learned something about reporting frankly, Mr. President.

VOICE 2: Good.

VOICE 1: I've got to go talk to people and see them outside of the White House and outside of their offices and gained a lot of insight and documentation. And it's, you know it's a tough look at the world and your administration and you.

VOICE 2: Right. Well I assume that means it's going to be a negative book, but you know, I'm some, I'm sort of 50 per cent used to that. That's alright. Some are good and some are bad. Sounds like this is going to be a bad one.

AMT: Well he's cheery there, but as you know, since details of that book were leaked, President Trump has been much more critical of what Bob Woodward has done. He is not a fan of the book, President Trump. In his first Canadian interview, I will be speaking to Bob Woodward about Fear: Trump in the White House. And I have to tell you I've been reading the book all weekend. I am however, bound by a non-disclosure agreement. I can't talk about the details until it's officially released because it wasn't leaked to me. Suffice to say that Bob Woodward has been around Washington since before Watergate and clearly talks to a lot of people. So wait for our interview with him on Wednesday. Stay with us, the CBC News is next. And then, as they look through the charred remains of nearly 20 million artifacts destroyed by an inferno at Brazil's National Museum this month, we're looking for lessons in the tragedy from museums at home in Canada and around the world. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent and on podcast.

[Music: Theme]

Brazil's museum inferno signals a need to better manage collections, says expert

Guests: Luana Santos, Robert Janes, Wafaa Bilal

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, fentanyl deaths are usually associated with the ongoing opioid crisis, but in the U.S. right now, fentanyl has been used as a lethal injection drug in the execution of an inmate on death row. It is the latest sign that states that kill their prisoners are having their own drug crisis, increasingly unable to secure the drugs conventionally used in capital punishment. And it's in part because pharmaceutical companies are withholding the drugs from them. We've got that story in half an hour. But first, when history goes up in flames.

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VOICE 1: It's still very difficult to find words to describe the feelings, the sensation to hear and watch the destruction. We will resurrect. We will create everything again, but not the way that was.

VOICE 2: It was shocking. It's bad for the future, my daughter. I came here many times. I know the history of the museum and my daughter will not be able to see. I have so many photos of sculptures.

VOICE 3: Look, it will never be the same, but surely they will do many things now. Maybe with 3-D. It will just be similar.

AMT: Well some thoughts from people in Rio de Janeiro last week, still processing the impact of that fire at the National Museum in Brazil. It was a week ago yesterday that a fire ripped through the museum's palatial main building. It's a former royal palace and it housed most of the museum's roughly 20 million artifacts. Protests erupted after that fire, when people learned of the financial strain the museum had been operating under for years. Water leaks, termite infestations were common problems and crucially, there was no working sprinkler system. Many critics believe the fire could have been prevented if the government had kept up proper funding. It's hard to overstate the scope of the collection in that museum. It included the oldest human fossil ever found in Brazil. Mummies from Brazil and Chile and an Egyptian coffin dating to the 11th century B.C. The Natural History Department included a unique lace bug collection. It had an extensive arthropod exhibit with local wildlife specimens not held anywhere else in the world. The museum also had audio recordings of indigenous Brazilian languages that have since died out. All of it was initially believed lost, but there's a little bit of hope now emerging. Taissa Rodriguez is a palaeontologist with the Federal University of Espirito Santo. After meeting with museum administrators late last week, she believes there is a chance the damage at least in the palaeontology and geology departments, may not have been as catastrophic as initially thought.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I was worse at the beginning because I didn't have much hope for the collection, but people are not allowed yet to get to the collection because there's so much rubble on top of them. But the cabinet built actually fire resistant cabinet. That doesn't mean that fossils there are still in a good shape, but there is some you know strong possibility that not everything is lost, the paleontological collection. So right now I am way more optimist than at the beginning of the week actually.

AMT: So while museum officials have begun the difficult task of saving whatever they can, others are finding ways to memorialize the collection. Museum study students put out a call for people to share their photos of artifacts after the fire. They were overwhelmed by the response. Luana Santos is a fourth year student in museology at the Federal University of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And we have reached her in Rio. Hello.

LUANA SANTOS: Hello.

AMT: It's been a week since that fire at the National Museum. What did that museum mean to you?

LS: For us the museum was more than a scientific institution. The museum are a family place. When we are go, since we was kids.

AMT: And so how, are you one of the people who were so outraged? What are you thinking these days?

LS: We are hope for something is going to be saved from the fire. We are hope some people are getting together to help. We want to change, you know. We want to the other museums too. We are in the same situation. Could be helped and that's going to happen again. That can't be happen again.

AMT: Well tell us about this photo collection. How did it start?

LS: It start with a idea to a teacher who telled us about we save our photographs, our personal photographs to see what all we have there. And we start to share with our friends and family and lost the proportions when we see it was in all the medias. All of the world was sending pictures to us now. We pass 14,000 e-mails yesterday. Some persons are sending us one picture, others 200 pictures. It's going to be a lot of work.

AMT: So these are people who would have visited the museum and taken pictures, while they were there?

LS: Exactly. Family pictures.

AMT: OK. And what do you want to do with those pictures?

LS: We want to do like a catalogue, a virtual museum. Something to the next generation could see what's happening there.

AMT: So in other words, you would take these images and you would create like a virtual museum online, with some of them you'd recreate?

LS: It's more like the affection memory. Not recreate the museum, is more like to the people see the importance of the place, not only scientists, but the affection, the family reunions, the weekends together. The place was more than then the scientific research.

AMT: So you would capture the emotion of what was in there, along with reminding people of what used to be there?

LS: Exactly.

AMT: That's so interesting because it created such emotion when it was destroyed. It really had, so many people had an emotional connection to that place.

LS: Exactly.

AMT: And how many students are working with you?

LS: By the moment, we start with six students, passed to 14. And now we are about a hundred.

AMT: Are the people who run the museum involved as well? Is this going to be done in coordination with them?

LS: We are talking with them, but in the moment they have so much to do. So we are waiting to sit and chat about and decide what we're going to do. We wanted to work with them.

AMT: And so you make the point that so many thousands of people have have responded already, what does that say to you? How do you react to that kind of turnout of pictures and outpouring when you asked for it?

LS: They show the importancy of there to the people, to the families. They show the importancy for the researches. That show to us there are patrimony matters. So many people don't have the idea then there was so important. That showed to us, how much the people care, how much the people liked the place. How much people were involved on there.

AMT: Well it really is about your own history and your own cultural history?

LS: Yeah.

AMT: Well thank you Luana for speaking with me.

LS: Thank you.

AMT: Luana Santos, fourth year student of museum studies or a museology, new word for me at the Federal University of the state of Rio de Janeiro. We reached her in Rio in Brazil today. In the wake of the fire in Brazil, museums around the world taking stock of their own collections and of how vulnerable they might be. According to my next guest, the risk of a large Canadian museum going up in flames the way the one in Brazil did, may be low, but there are other threats that are looming. Robert Janes is a visiting research fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in the UK. He is the author of, Museums Without Borders and he joins us from Canmore, Alberta. Hello.

ROBERT JANES: Hello Anna Maria. Pleasure to be here.

AMT: What went through your mind when you first heard of that fire at the Brazil National Museum?

RJ: Well simply that it's an unmitigated disaster. I mean you mentioned there were 20 million objects and I understand that perhaps 90 per cent of them have been destroyed. And for all of us, objects are really the material embodiment of our collective memory. So a great deal has been lost in terms of Brazilian cultural history. And I think really that the global museum community is in shock and we send our condolences, if that's the right word in this circumstance.

AMT: Have you been in touch with colleagues in Brazil.

RJ: I have indirectly through the International Council of Museums because I serve on one of their working groups. And they're now mobilizing a task force of specialists, museum specialists from around the world to provide whatever assistance is required.

AMT: It's a reminder that some of the things that are held, that really if something happens to them, that's it. Like the audio recordings of indigenous peoples in Brazil gone now. So let's talk about Canada. What are the greatest risks facing museums here?

RJ: Well as you mentioned, I don't think the risk of this sort of catastrophic fire would be common in Canada, especially in our national museums because they're very well funded and very well taken care of. But I think that there are other fires waiting to happen in museums in Canada and elsewhere. And I think it's related to what's called the starvation cycle in the non-profit world and this pertains to museums as well. And that's where a limited museum resources go to the front of house operations to marketing to exhibitions to increasing audience to shops to restaurants and building infrastructure, such as sprinkler systems, humidity control systems, collection storage and management are often ignored because of this starvation cycle and the need to put the money up front. And so facilities aren't upgraded and I think this is obviously Brazil's problem, but it's beginning to unfold in Canada too because collections management is a very expensive undertaking and most museums don't even know how much they're spending, even if they do have some funding to do it.

AMT: Collections management means, literally managing the collections?

RJ: That's right. Holding them, storing them, recording them, tracking them, taking care of them, conserving them. And I think that museum managers and workers, I mean all of us, have to assume some responsibility for this. Despite the steady decline in public funding, that's usually blamed as the reason for this, but on the other hand, museums continue to amass collections, even though they're not cared for properly. And much more in my experience, many of these collections are redundant or they're irrelevant to the museum mandate. So I think it behooves all of us in the museum community, not only in Canada, North America, but around the world, to start thinking about the collections a bit more constructively and a bit more critically.

AMT: Are you suggesting people start culling the collections?

RJ: I am exactly. Another word for that is grading and that's where you spend the time and money to go into those store rooms, go into your exhibit areas, decide what is priceless, irreplaceable, compared to what may be undocumented material, material in poor condition or duplicate material. And then make the hard decision to sell or give away what you don't need and then devote your scarce resources to taking care of those things that are absolutely important and irreplaceable. But you know in the museum world, this is a very difficult process because collections are the pre-eminent sacred cow and a lot of museum workers simply don't like to talk the way we're talking right now because there's sort of this magical belief that one must keep collections forever. But that's no longer really realistic or possible.

AMT: You know, I've been in a number of museums where you can barely move. There's so much stuff.

RJ: That's right.

AMT: Not in Canada by the way, but in other places. That's what you're talking about. If they sold off some of that, some of that stuff is really valuable, they'd be able to, you're saying they'd be able to run their museums more efficiently and look after risk factors, better as well?

RJ: I think so because these things are invaluable, but often times, many museums are collecting the same objects. So they can either share them. They can deaccession them, which means to get rid of them from your collections. They have undocumented material and this stuff just doesn't merit an expensive investment in collections management. So I think the collections really need to be graded.

AMT: When we look at the threats to cultural collections, where does climate change fit in?

RJ: Well I think that's really the elephant in the room and that's an excellent question. Because the consequences of climate change are here and now. Wildfires, flooding, extreme weather events, hurricanes and many museums have already begun to suffer from these sorts of events. But it's not at all clear to me that the global museum community has embraced the idea of climate change and the fact that it's here now and it's already impacting them. I think this is a critical issue that really needs to be addressed.

AMT: And do they have to address it differently than other institutions would?

RJ: I think so because of this notion of collections and the fact that they need to be protected physically. There are a number of good things underway with respect to climate change, awareness and museums. There's the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice in Canada right now for example. It has over 1000 participants interacting in a digital network to begin to protect our institutions from the consequences of climate change. There's a museum of climate change network in Australia. There's a climate museum in the U.K. There's the International Council of Museums, but really these aren't enough because there are 55,000 museums in the world and what we really need now is a global museum movement to confront climate change because museums are really ideally placed to take on this issue. They're knowledge based. They're the most trusted social organizations in our society and that's been documented time and time again. They're grounded in their communities. They're bridges between science and culture and they're feedbacks of the best of our civilization, art and objects. Just like a seed bank for biological specimens. So really, coupled with the fact that they're public storefronts where people visit them every single day, museums are a place where the conversation can begin about climate change. Not only to protect museum resources, but begin to develop awareness and community resilience on behalf of the communities they serve. So I see this as the big agenda coming up.

AMT: Really interesting to hear what you have to say on this. Thank you.

RJ: You're very welcome.

AMT: That's Robert Janes. He's a visiting research fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in the UK. We reached him in Canmore, Alberta today. Now Wafaa Bilal has been listening in. He watched the fire engulf the National Museum of Brazil with a familiar sense of dread. Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi-American artist and he's seen his own cultural institutions under attack in Iraq, over the last decade or more. He's come up with an innovative exhibit to showcase the opportunities for cultural rebirth. He's now based in New York City, where he's also a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His exhibit 168:01 has finished a successful run just last month at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Wafaa Bilal joins us from New York. Hi.

WAFAA BILAL: Hi. Thank you so much, Anna Maria.

AMT: Now am I saying the name of the exhibit correctly?

WB: Yes. It's 168 hours and one minute.

AMT: And why is it called that?

WB: This is an anecdote. When we were kids in Iraq being told in the 13th century, when the Mongolian invaded Iraq and for them to cross the Tigris River, they had to build a bridge and unfortunately they had to destroy every library in Baghdad, including the House of Wisdom, Bayt Al-Hikma. And they made a bridge out of these books and for seven days, the books bled ink into the river turning the water to blue. And seven days after that, all the knowledge of these books were washed away and the seven days equal to a 168 hours. I'm taking that story and link the past into the present to address the issues of destruction of the cultural institution and I'm adding that one minute in the hope of reversing the destruction.

AMT: You're using books. Tell us about this exhibit.

WB: In 2003, the College of Fine Art in Baghdad, unfortunately lost their entire collection, which was about 70,000 titles. And I'm taking the Mongolian siege of Baghdad and destruction of books and I'm starting from the minute that all the books were washed away from not destroyed by the water and washed away, the knowledge away from it. And I'm starting with 1000 empty books and calling on the public to come and participate in rebuilding the College of Fine Art library. And it is an exchange, when a participant take a white book as a reminder of their contribution to the rebuilding of the College of Fine Art in Baghdad and a reminder of the lost and in exchange of that white book they donate a text book that is going to the College of Fine Art in Baghdad. Unfortunately, we have so far collected over 2000 books and arrived to Baghdad. The Aga Khan museum was fantastic in connecting us to the local community to aid another community in devastation.

AMT: So the reaction was good?

WB: It was really great. And you know, I have to echo the sentiment of what the collection in the museum is. It is really the glue of the society. It is our collective memory as one of your host said. And it is what bring the society together. Other than that, we will be vulnerable to the outside ideas.

AMT: It's interesting because we did see the looting of museums in Baghdad, you've seen a number of wars. You go back to the 13th century. What is it about those collections? You talk about the glue of the society, the people taking over a city or a country, they understand that right away. Don't they? Because it's almost like they make a beeline for those places.

WB: Oh absolutely. I mean it's between organized crime, but I think that the heart of the matter of why destroying a collection is really destroying a society to remake it. If you think about it, if we think about these artifacts and books are the collective memory. What you do when you erase that memory, you are imposing a new one on it. And it is very common to see invading army or a terrorist organization, they go into the collection first. That is as we said, is an organized crime and they of course benefit from it. But more than that, they are destroying the history of the society in order to replace it by their own history.

AMT: And so we know that in Brazil it was a fire, but when you saw that museum go up in that raging fire, what did you think?

WB: It really breaks my heart because it brought a lot of memories about Baghdad. But at the same time, it show us how urgent the government have to fund these institutions and have to give them the fund that should maintain their collection.

AMT: And the sort of the reaction from regular people in the general public has been strong. People understand what gets lost.

WB: Oh absolutely. I mean the other host you have is telling you about how the family go there and interact with the history and imagine that is lost forever. But the nice thing, people step up, just like how people step up to rebuild the College of Fine Art library in Baghdad. People understand the how important these object and artifact and they wanted to come and rebuild it. It is true, it would never be the same, but at the same time, it is going to link the past to the future by recollecting these images, even if it's virtual. Even if we go to new technology in trying to recreate these object out of 3 D, it is going to maintain that link to the past. And that's why I think participation in a post disaster event like this, it's so important on the part of the public.

AMT: And so you say that you've had about two thousand books that have been donated. So people by the blank book and with the money from the blank book, you buy a new collection?

WB: What we did is we never, I personally never wanted to impose on the Iraqis, what the collection could be. So I asked them do you have an index of what you lost? They said no, the index was on paper and it was lost with the 70,000 book. And I said what do you want us to do from now. They said we want to look into the future. And I said OK, if it's a matter of collaboration, give me a list that is generated by the student and the faculty. I never wanted to impose on them, what kind of art history books they should collect. And the nice thing they stepped up as well sending us a very long list into of books, that is technical books, that's conceptual books and from that list, we make that available online and for people to purchase them or donate and in exchange of the donation, we take that donation and we buy the books and we send these books to Baghdad.

AMT: Wafaa Bilal, we have to end it there, but thanks for telling me about the project.

WB: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.

AMT: Bye-bye.

WB: Bye-bye.

AMT: Wafaa Bilal, Iraqi-American artist based in New York City. Stay with us.

Use of fentanyl to execute U.S. death row prisoners a risk to public safety: advocate

Guests: Maya Foa, Joshua Marquis, Austin Sarat

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: How do you feel about this day, eating fentanyl to kill you?

VOICE 2: I think it's awesome. I mean it's killing people all over the place. You guys get pharmaceutical grade fentanyl and just bang me up man.

AMT: That is Scott Dozier, an inmate on death row, speaking with a reporter. The journalist was concerned about the possibility that his death could go horribly wrong because he was set to be the first convict to be executed with fentanyl. Nevada, like other jurisdictions, has had to get creative lately in how it sources drugs for lethal injections. Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly unwilling to see their products used in this process. And Scott Dozier's execution was stayed, after a drug company filed the lawsuit. Alvogen makes a sedative that was supposed to be used along with the fentanyl. The company claims its product midazolam was obtained under false pretenses. The German pharmaceutical company, Fresenius Kabi, tried to stop Nebraska in a similar lawsuit, claiming the state acquired its drugs illegally. Matt Kuhn speaks for that company.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Fresenius Kabi believes that our products should be used only for their intended use. The reasons that they were developed were to help patients and the caregivers who take care of them. They're lifesaving products. And a few years ago, we implemented authorized distributor agreements to make sure that prisons and other facilities like them, do not obtain our products for use in lethal injection.

AMT: Nevertheless, the August execution of Carey Dean Moore went ahead, making him the first American executed with a lethal injection that included fentanyl. Maya Foa has been following all of this closely. She is the director of Reprieve, that's an international human rights organization, that among other things, campaigns against the death penalty and lethal injection, in particular. We have reached her in London, England. Hello.

MAYA FOA: Hello.

AMT: Let's start with the Nebraska decision to use fentanyl in the execution of Carey Dean Moore. What did you think of that?

MF: It's a pretty extraordinary decision on a number of different levels. Fentanyl is responsible, as you've heard, for killing scores of people. I think it's 90 to 100 deaths a day in America using fentanyl. So to choose to use it in executions and these are horrible deaths, to choose to use it in executions, in a totally experimental protocol is a surprising thing to do, not just because it might well go wrong the lethal injection it may not work for the in the way in which it's intended because it was never designed for that use, but also because it increases the risks to the public and patients when states seek drugs outside of legitimate supply chains.

AMT: Let's look a bit of that. Scott Frakes is the director of the Corrections Department in Nebraska. It's his job to procure such drugs for execution. Now we could not get an interview with him. He did not want to speak with us about this. What do we know about how states choose which drugs to use and how they actually get their hands on them?

MF: Well from what we've seen across a range of different states over the last eight years or so, is state scrambling. Scrambling to design and I use design very likely, new cocktails as they call them, of drugs to form their lethal injection protocols. And sometimes they pick drugs, which are so clearly show that these are non-medical people designing this pseudo medical process by which inmates are put to death.

AMT: How did the German company determine that their drugs were used in this execution?

What Fresenius knows and you heard from the company spokesman there, is that those drugs should not have been available for purchase by the prison. That means they've gone through unauthorized suppliers, unauthorized channels, the black market effectively, to get these and the other drugs in the cocktail.

AMT: You say the black market. What are you talking about, they bought it on the street, where would they have gotten it?

MF: We don't know, one because Nebraska refuses to disclose that information to the press or to the public or to lawyers, but let's look at what Nebraska has done in the past. We know that in 2010, 2011 Nebraska officials including the official that you tried to reach for comment, sought drugs from India. And they sought execution drugs using a middleman, this is all in the public domain, called Chris Harris. And that middleman has no pharmaceutical background and was buying drugs, using deceitful methods, diverting those medicines to Nebraska where they were intended for use in execution.

AMT: And yet the judge's ruling on the Carey Dean Moore decision, when did not force the state of Nebraska to prove that the drugs weren't produced by Forsenius Kabi. What do you make of that decision?

MF: When it comes to executions, what I have seen is that courts often want to see the execution be carried out and don't want a technicality to prevent it. It may have been viewed as a technicality. The reality is that this was a really serious breach of contract and I'm sure the company and others will continue to seek a remedy to that breach of contract, so that this doesn't continue to happen.

AMT: How did lethal injection come to be the most common form of execution in the U.S. in the first place?

MF: It was invented by someone in around 1977, in one state, Oklahoma. Used it in every other state, then followed suit. They chose to use the lethal injection I believe because it was marketed as the softer, kinder, gentler way to kill this medicalized execution.

AMT: What drugs are they using? Just maybe take us through like, it's a cocktail of drugs, what are they trying to do?

MF: The traditional three drug cocktail, consisted of an anaesthetic agent as the first drug, usually sodium thiopental. A paralytic agent as the second drug, which paralyzes the voluntary muscles, not the involuntary muscles and then the third drug, potassium chloride, which stops the heart. And the intention of those three, the first one as I say is supposed to put the inmate to sleep, often wouldn't work because they would miss a vein or didn't administer the right quantity. The second drug is an interesting one. Its function is purely cosmetic. It is so that we, the witnesses in the public, do not see visible signs of distress. So that if the inmate is not properly anaesthetized, not asleep as happens, they do not rise and thrash upon administration of the third drug, the potassium chloride, which we know if you are conscious, is like having fire pass through your veins. It's an extremely painful experience that the Supreme Court of the United States has said would be tantamount to torture if you were not anaesthetized. The problem with the second drug, the paralytic agent, which was used in Nebraska and continues to be used in different states, is that it masks that potential extreme suffering that the prisoner would face. That would be a violation of their right not to suffer a cruel and unusual, torturous execution.

AMT: Now we heard the comment from Mr. Kuhne, the Forsenius spokesperson, do you think that company is acting out of corporate responsibility or are they bowing to pressure from groups such as yours?

MF: They absolutely take this issue seriously. Every single manufacturer and every single company in the pharmaceutical industry exists to make and promote the use of medicines to save and improve lives and health of patients. But they are also seeking to enforce their contracts and uphold their rights as a business in the United States.

AMT: And I know what you're talking about in terms of lethal injection, but a lot of fentanyl is being diverted from hospitals too. Are they fighting that?

MF: Absolutely, they are. Yes. And that's where I think there's a real irony in states picking fentanyl. You know on the one hand, they are telling the manufacturers and distributors within the pharmaceutical industry, you need to keep control of this. You need to track every vile. You need to make sure that people don't die of opioid overdoses. And then states like Nebraska and Nevada passed these laws or seek to undermine the abilities of companies to monitor and control the supply chain for dangerous drugs like fentanyl.

AMT: And I'm wondering how concerned you are that by bringing this to the foreign and pushing these suits that try to limit supply, that you encourage states to use back channels to acquire drugs.

MF: So the states have the choice here to take a responsible approach to capital punishment, if it is lawful in their state and that responsible approach would be acknowledging that it is against business interests for them to continue to use these products in violation of contract and this stated intention to the companies. And that it exposes patients and the public in their state to risk, if they do that, as well as creating risks of botched executions. Many states are doing that right now.

AMT: Well they in fact, they're moving to nitrogen gas. Utah is bringing back the firing squad, are you comfortable with those methods?

MF: It's the move to nitrogen gas and a move to the firing squad, I believe Utah has the firing squad. Nitrogen gas has never been used before. There will of course need to be litigation to establish whether that is a humane method of execution. My position on the death penalty is clear, but on the lethal injection, the misuse of medicines and executions has done enormous harm.

AMT: And so your end goal is to get rid of the death penalty?

MF: I am opposed to the death penalty. Yes.

AMT: Do you think you're winning this fight?

MF: Absolutely. We know that states are moving away from the death penalty and we're moving away from the misuse of medicines and executions. Certain states are acknowledging that this method is broken and that they need to do something differently.

AMT: Maya Foa, thank you for your perspective.

MF: Thank you.

AMT: Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, that's an international human rights organization that among other things, campaigns against the death penalty and lethal injection. She's in London, England. Now my next guest has a courtroom perspective on this issue, from both sides because Joshua Marquis has worked alternately in defense and prosecution, in several death penalty cases. He is the district attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon. And we have reached him in Astoria, Oregon. Hi.

JOSHUA MARQUIS: Good morning.

AMT: You just heard Ms. Foa, who has been at the centre of the movement to prevent pharmaceutical companies from selling their drugs for execution by lethal injection. How do you respond to what she's saying?

JM: I know this sounds harsh, but I think there's an intellectual dishonesty that permeates this and that is that there are a significant minority of the population in the United States, depending on which poll you listen to, somewhere between 30 and 45 per cent who are absolutely opposed to the death penalty. And the flip side is that there is a clear majority running anywhere between 55 and 75 per cent who support it. Those who oppose the death penalty, will take any position whatsoever because they sincerely and genuinely feel the death penalty is wrong. The move towards lethal injection or what may be more aesthetically palatable ways of killing someone and let's make no mistake, that's what the state's doing. This is not a medical procedure. They may be using needles and it may look like a medical procedure, but it's an execution. And their claim is well, this particular drug shouldn't be used for it and what if it causes momentary pain. If the drugs are used improperly, can they cause discomfort? Absolutely, but it's I believe and I know this is a strong charge, intellectually dishonest to say, well what we're looking for here is a patient who gets a pain-free procedure and anything less is a violation of the Constitution. That has simply never been the decision of the United States Supreme Court.

AMT: What's your personal position on the death penalty?

JM: I believe it is a penalty that is very rarely, but sometimes necessary. I've prosecuted probably 40 or 50 murder cases and I've only asked juries on two occasions to sentence those people to death. In one case, the jury said yes three separate times. In the other case, the jury said no the man was not worthy of the death penalty.

AMT: Let me ask you about transparency. Citizens in Nebraska do not know how exactly the government got a hold of the drugs that were used in the execution of Carey Dean Moore, is that not a public right to know?

JM: I believe that most of the claims of well, we need to know exactly where this drug came from and we have a right to know and we have a right to start the litigation, it's not about transparency. It's an attempt to essentially find another way to get a European pharmaceutical giant that doesn't want the bad publicity to basically cut off a drug. Let's be clear, all these drugs are in legitimate use in every one of these state correctional facilities.

AMT: OK. So let me ask you. If state governments are as Ms. Foa is saying, is saying obtaining these drugs illegally, what does it mean for the death penalty and the ability of the state to carry out a death penalty?

JM: Well I think she was right in that what will happen is many states will choose to go back to what some people see as far more brutal methods of execution, such as firing squad, which again ironically according to what I've heard from doctors and anaesthesiologists, which neither of which I am, would probably be the closest thing to a pain-free, air free method. I would agree that you don't want to be buying pharmaceuticals, whether they're for execution or even more critically for the care of patients, off the black market. That may not be legitimate.

AMT: Well so let me just pick up on that because you know I hear what you're saying about where this fight has led, but now that it's led there, how should prosecutors take that into consideration, when deciding whether to pursue the death penalty?

JM: I have, I'm not trying to downplay my role and that of other prosecutors. I don't claim that when I make a decision to seek the death penalty or when I stand in front of a jury and urge them to return a verdict, which I know will mean this man will be sent to death row. There's no gilding the lily. I'm asking them to participate in the execution process. I am participating in the execution process. Now with that said, neither I nor the jury are deciding which of 12 or 15 drugs are going to be used. That's a decision that basically rests with the State Department of Corrections.

AMT: Again, if we look at where this is now, you can't unknow what you know. So is it ethical to pursue the death sentence knowing that laws might be broken to carry it out?

JM: Yes. I think it is because well, I certainly don't support buying drugs on the black market that are not approved through the process that they should be. But no, I don't believe it's unethical or wrong for me as a prosecutor to pursue something knowing that the litigation caused by sincere opponents of the death penalty, might in some cases cause a corrections employee fifteen or twenty five years and let's be clear that's usually the minimum amount of time it takes, to try to find a drug that is approved, in order to get it.

AMT: You led the prosecution against Randy Lee Guzek, who's a double murderer.

JM: For 20 years. Three separate trials, yup.

AMT: He remains on death row, as we speak. How do considerations around the mode of execution weigh on you, as you pursue a capital case?

JM: Well in the United States, for the most part, the prosecutor has really no say whatsoever about the method of execution or the speed with which that happens. I'm not trying to avoid my moral obligation. I did play a role, one I'm not ashamed of in putting him on death row. The question of the method of execution, I think it's legitimate because I think any thinking person would agree that someone should not be tortured to death. If he is ever executed, which is a substantial question, would I have a moral duty to be there? Probably. Do I want to? Not particularly, but I'm not trying to minimize my role in it. I stood before a jury and asked that Randy Guzek be put to death. I believe it was the right decision. Four Jurors, 4 sets of jurors, 48 people believed it was right, but and again, I'm not trying to minimize this, but most people's experience with death is they're growing that comes up with you know terminating the lives of a beloved pet. In many cases, we're talking about the exact same drugs. So in some ways, it's a little absurd to say OK, I had this relationship with this dog or cat, especially when you're a young person for 10 or 15 years. That person that you're going to participate in the end causing the death, but we're going to say well the exact same process is so cruel and unusual that people that our courts have decided are the very worst among us and let's be clear, only one in a thousand murderers in the United States even receives a death sentence and fewer than them are ever executed.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about the stats. Execution has been declining in the U.S. There were 68 executions in 1998. There were 23 in 2017. Is that the effect of campaigns against the death penalty? Is that the stretching of appeals, what explains those stats?

JM: Both. I believe what's happening is that juries are becoming more discriminating about who they sentence to death. Prosecutors like me are in turn becoming discriminating about the kinds of cases in which we ask for the death penalty. And I think that's as it should be. I think it should be an extraordinarily rare sanction, reserved for the absolute, very worst. There are several states that have taken the death penalty off the table. What I find interesting is that in none of those states have the voters ever said OK, we've changed our mind. We don't want the death penalty.

AMT: Joshua Marquis, we have to leave it there. Thank you for your perspective.

JM: Thank you for having me.

AMT: Joshua Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon. Now the death penalty in the U.S. has a long history. Austin Sarat writes about some of the darkest chapters of that history in a book called, Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty. Austin Sarat is the Associate Dean and Chair of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College. Hello.

AUSTIN SARAT: Hi. Nice to be with you.

AMT: It varies considerably from state to state, but how would you generally characterize the system of capital punishment in the U.S.?

AS: Well I think that the system of capital punishment in the United States has been plagued by many now well recognized problems. In the guilt phase, we found that the death penalty system in the United States turns out to be unreliable in distinguishing the guilty from the innocent. More than 150 people have been exonerated from death rows in the United States because of problems with their convictions. In the punishment phase, we found that for example, race plays a very large role in determining who gets a death sentence and in the punishment phase, botched executions are now all too common. So it appears that the death penalty system is rather plagued with various and I think very troubling problems.

AMT: And how would you try to fix that?

AS: We can try as hard as we can to make sure that mistakes are not made and innocent people are not convicted and there are of course reforms that have been undertaken, giving people lawyers and changing the process. But all that as I said, seems to me to be really quite illusory. You're not going to have a death penalty system that is any more perfect than the human beings who administer it.

AMT: And I'm wondering how significant it is to use an international pharmaceutical companies are having an effect on capital punishment protocols, when it comes to lethal injection?

AS: So again in the history of the death penalty the United States, whether it was electrocution or the gas chamber or now lethal injection, the question of the technology and how it would be implemented and who would be responsible for it has played a large role. So it's not surprising to me that drug companies around the world today are looking at the drugs that they manufacture and asking how are they being used? Are they being used for the purposes that they were intended and it doesn't surprise me that many of those drug companies say, they don't want their drugs used to put people to death.

AMT: Does Joshua Marquis have a point, is it naive or intellectually dishonest to say that the death penalty can be executed without the inmate feeling pain?

AS: Well I think the accusation of intellectual dishonesty is of course, a very serious one. The Constitution of the United States does not command painless death. It commands at least as interpreted by the courts, that an execution imposed no more pain than is necessary. And that explains in part what I would describe as this search for a technologically perfect method of execution, looking for the next method that will ensure that no more pain than is necessary is imposed. We've never found that technology. The same claims that are made now about nitrogen gas, that were made in the late 1970s for lethal injection, were made 50 years earlier about the gas chamber and at the end of the 19th century about electrocution. Namely that each of these technologies would be safe, reliable and humane. And if we look at the way in which they're heavily used, we found no technology of execution, which has been able to deliver reliably on that promise.

AMT: Well and your book discusses botched executions throughout American history. What kind of impact do those stories have on public attitudes toward the death penalty?

AS: I think stories of botched execution have fuelled an effort to find better technologies, but in the most recent period, the series of botched executions that have plagued lethal injection, have fit into this broad story about a death penalty system plagued with problems at all phases. So that now botched executions are seen as part of a story of the death penalty, as a kind of broken machine.

AMT: Am I right in the fact that the people support the death penalty, they don't necessarily support the actual execution?

AS: When you actually look at what happens when jurors in the United States are now asked to consider whether or not, particular defendants, deserve a death sentence. There's lots of evidence that jurors are now much more reluctant than they have ever been to impose pose capital sentences. I think what that suggests is that the closer that people get to the reality of a death penalty system, the more that they know about it, the less they are likely to embrace it.

AMT: Do you foresee a time when this will vanish in the United States?

AS: I think more and more Americans are asking themselves the question of, not just what does the death penalty do for us, but what does the death penalty do to us? Does the death penalty make us a safer, saner society and a society that is closer to living up to its values. And I think there's lots of evidence that Americans are now thinking that the answer those questions might likely be no.

AMT: Austin Sarat, thanks for your thoughts on all of this.

AS: Well thanks for having me.

AMT: Austin Sarat, the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty. He's a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College. Just one more thing, Tennessee is also facing a legal challenge to its legal injection protocols. The state executed Billy Ray Irick. He was convicted of rape and murder, a murder of a child. A medical observer to the execution filed a statement in court last Friday. He noted that the chemicals used, did not suppress pain and as a result Dr. David Lubarsky says Billy Ray Irick "experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride." The judge in the case rejected that argument that the execution amounted to unconstitutional torture. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis is on the show to discuss her new documentary about gender disparity in Hollywood. Remember you can take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. Free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Sept. 10, 2018 episode transcript

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