Compounding the Compounding Disaster
Was a callous disregard for people the Rx for medication contamination?
B
y word count and by body count, this month's cover story is
the biggest we've ever published. It's also one of the most dis-
turbing.
"Compounding
Disaster," which
begins on page 22,
details the mete-
oric rise and even
more startling fall
of the New
England
Compounding
Center, the strip-
mall pharmacy in
suburban Boston
that singlehandedly sparked a nationwide outbreak of fungal meningi-
tis by selling vials of injectable steroids that were tainted with a dead-
ly fungus.
The toll from the deadliest medication contamination case in U.S.
history is staggering: 64 dead and 750 injured and, as you'll see in the
4 sidebars that accompany our cover story, impaired for life.
Though a mound of damning evidence suggests otherwise, you can
only hope that the owners and operators of the compounding lab
weren't as reckless and as remorseless as they appear to have been in
carrying out their alleged crimes. It would certainly be easier to fath-
om (not pardon) their deadly sins if they were blinded by such
destructive human behaviors as greed and arrogance — and not just a
callous disregard for others.
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Editor's Page
Dan O'Connor