The capital punishment-opposing nun prominently featured in the movie “Dead Man Walking” has asked Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) to recall a drug that’s used in the execution of prisoners.
But Sister Helen Prejean isn’t likely to be pleased with the response from the Dublin, Ohio-based pharmaceuticals distributor. A Cardinal spokeswoman was asked multiple times whether the company would yield to the nun’s wishes and she wouldn’t directly answer the question. Instead, she repeated the following statement:
As a distributor, our role in the healthcare supply chain is to ensure the safe and efficient delivery of products from manufacturers to customers holding the appropriate federal and state licenses. We do not play a part in the determination made by prescribing physicians, legislators, or regulators regarding the use of the products we distribute.
Sorry, Helen. The spokeswoman said that the statement above was essentially the message that Cardinal CEO George Barrett sent to Prejean in a letter the company faxed and mailed to her earlier today.
In Prejean’s letter, she asked that Cardinal recall the drug Nembutal, also known as pentobarbital, in one specific death penalty case involving a Georgia prisoner.
“Two of Cardinal Health’s core values are its commitment to acting in the best interests of the patient and improving patient safety,” Prejean wrote. “The sale of Nembutal for use in executions appears to violate both the letter and spirit of [Cardinal’s] code of ethics and your standards of business conduct.”
Before that she wasted little time in getting to her point, writing in the letter’s second sentence: “This sale was not for the purpose of ‘improving people’s lives’ as you say on your website, but to kill people, i.e., persons sentenced to death.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Ouch. Probably not the kind of publicity Cardinal’s looking for, and no doubt a subject it’d rather avoid — but it’ll likely be forgotten soon enough.
“Dead Man Walking” was released in 1995, grossed $39 million in the U.S. and starred Sean Penn as a convicted killer who was executed and Susan Sarandon as the character based on Prejean. Sarandon won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for portraying Prejean. The movie was based on a book by Prejean.
It featured the following line from Penn’s character that Prejean would likely agree with: “I just wanna say I think killin’ is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it’s me or y’all or your government.”
