After experimenting on rabbits and on death sentence "volunteers", Chinese officials have found a prescription for execution by lethal injection, and have taken the first step to end capital punishment in China by shooting.
They are keeping the prescription secret, in case it gets into the hands of criminals, and so they can patent it.
The first four criminals to be executed routinely by lethal injection were put to death on Monday.
The extraordinary tale of the way officials developed the drug, using different variants on inmates from death row in Yunnan Province, was revealed for the first time yesterday in a Beijing newspaper, which reprinted a frank account of the experiments from the provincial newspaper, the Huashang News.
It said that since March, court officials in the south-western city of Kunming began a series of 22 executions by experimental lethal injections rather than shooting, at the proposal of Wang Jun, president of a hospital in Kunming.
It is standard practice in China to shoot criminals in a stadium, and in the past families were asked to pay for the lethal bullet. China executes three times as many people as the rest of the world put together, according to Amnesty International, which said that last year more than 4,000 executions, all by gunfire, were officially confirmed.
The initiative was approved by Kunming Intermediate Court, the paper said, explaining that it believed it was a more advanced, civilised and humane form of capital punishment.
Wang Jun formed a legal-medical team which carried out research on euthanasia and fatal anaesthetics and formed four pairs of drugs. By experimenting on rabbits, they identified the two pairs which caused the heart to stop in the shortest time. On March 28th the intermediate court ordered the first execution in China by intravenous injection on two criminals. The procurator sent two officials to supervise.
On August 6th five prisoners were sent to an open-air execution ground. They were laid on stretchers and injected in the left arm. None was said to have shown any fear or resistance. Wang Jun chatted with them, asking, "How are you feeling?" One criminal answered, "I feel comfortable," and then lapsed into a coma. All five died in one minute; one in 40 seconds.
The operation was witnessed by Zhang Zhenguo, the deputy party secretary, and other high officials. They made a report to the Supreme Court and the National People's Congress in Beijing.
The fact that the experiment has been published in full in Beijing almost certainly means other regions of China will be encouraged to follow suit. The account ended by saying officials did not want to reveal their secret prescription. "It might be used by bandits but on the other hand they are thinking of applying for a patent," it said. "To some extent," said the director of the Kunming court, "it is a kind of euthanasia."