Oct 8 2012
The New York Times: Scant Oversight Of Drug Maker In Fatal Meningitis Outbreak
The rising toll -; 7 dead, 57 ill and thousands potentially exposed -; has cast a harsh light on the loose regulations that legal experts say allowed a company to sell 17,676 vials of an unsafe drug to pain clinics in 23 states. ... some doctors and clinics have turned away from major drug manufacturers and have taken their business to so-called compounding pharmacies, like New England Compounding, which mix up batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge -; and with little of the federal oversight of drug safety and quality that is routine for the big companies Grady, Pollack and Tavernise, 10/6).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |