Published: Sunday, December 29, 2013 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 26, 2013 at 10:41 p.m.
If chemical weapons killed 64 people on U.S. soil, the nation would be in a frenzy trying to determine what measures could be taken to prevent it from happening again.
Yet Americans largely reacted with a shrug when 64 people died, including four in Ocala, and thousands more were sickened last year due to tainted steroid injections.
Sure, the incident led to national media coverage of problems at the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy where the steroid was produced and others like it. But the state and federal response has been mostly voluntary regulations that inspire little confidence that compounding pharmacies are receiving adequate oversight.
For the past nine months, Star-Banner staff writer Fred Hiers has investigated the thousands of compounding pharmacies in Florida and beyond that are becoming significant players in the nation's drug market. His eye-opening series recently published in The Sun, “Compound Fractures,” shows that the public remains at risk from unsafe drugs made at those pharmacies.
Last year's 64 deaths made for the most deadly compounding calamity in U.S. history. But they weren't the first deaths connected to compounding pharmacies. Drugs made in compounding pharmacies in Alabama, Maryland, South Carolina and Texas were previously linked to deaths due to problems such as drug contamination, improper sterilization practices and potency levels far higher than drug labels indicated.
continue to read here
No comments:
Post a Comment