A s you fumble through the anesthesia drug tray, you begin to sweat. You notice that some drugs are missing. You quickly move to open the Pyxis machine but those drugs are missing, too. You swing open the heavy door to the operating room next door. Before you can speak through your mask, your colleague frames the question as a bewildered statement: “Let me guess, where’s the succinylcholine?” Jerry A. Cohen, MD, past president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), noted in 2012, “When I started practicing, I thought whatever drugs I needed would always be there. Now I open the drawer and occasionally something isn’t there.” In the past five years, according to the ASA, the United States has experienced shortages of an array of vital anesthetic drugs such as propofol, succinylcholine, even epinephrine. The FDA began tracking drug shortages in 1999 in anticipation of possible manufacturing interruptions that might be caused by the Y2K computer scare. During the first ...