Ex-New England Compounding Pharmacist Linked To 64 Meningitis Deaths Arrested At Logan Airport

[hatrack]

Federal authorities on Thursday arrested a pharmacist linked to a 2012 meningitis outbreak, marking the first criminal charges­ in an episode that killed 64 people and sickened hundreds of others around the country.

Glenn Adam Chin, 46, was arrested at Boston’s Logan International Airport as he tried to board a flight to Hong Kong. Chin worked as a supervisory pharmacist at the now-bankrupt New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., which produced the tainted drugs behind the most deadly meningitis outbreak in U.S. history. More than 750 patients in 20 states contracted fungal infections after receiving injections of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, or MPA, produced by NECC, according to investigators. Of those, 64 died.

A criminal complaint on Thursday charged Chin with mail fraud for his alleged role in shipping a batch of MPA that was supposedly safe for human use to one of the specialty pharmacy’s customers, Michigan Pain Specialists, in August 2012. Doctors there injected the drugs into 625 patients, more than a third of whom got sick. Fifteen eventually died.

According to an arrest affidavit filed by a special agent for the Food and Drug Administration, Chin oversaw NECC’s “sterile clean rooms” and supervised more than a dozen pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. He also was responsible for compounding — or custom-mixing — NECC’s steroid solutions, the affidavit said. Investigators said that Chin not only oversaw unsanitary practices such as inadequate sterilization of equipment and improper safety testing, but that he also tried to cover up those shortcuts.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/pharmacist-linked-to-2012-meningitis-outbreak-arrested/2014/09/04/6ad1f4dc-344b-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html

[AuntPatsy]

1. Makes one wonder just what else is being injected by unsuspecting Americans