114. The Fungus (New England Compounding Center)
A compounding pharmacy's attempt to maximize revenue leads to a devastating public health crisis.
Prelude: Pharmakon Pharmaceuticals ships overly-potent medication to hospitals, including a neonatal intensive care unit.
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Original music for Swindled is written and performed by Trevor Howard (Deformr).
Comments (25)
Just found out a very close friend’s daughter died because of hospital bacteria. Super bacteria. Hospitals need to not fail our kids anymore.
I've been a NICU nurse for 12 years in the US, and worked as a travel nurse for 5 of those years. I have never heard of such an egregious pharmacy error on this level in my career. Horrific. Incredible episode.
One of the most horrifying things I've ever heard.
They put the con in PharmaCon 😡
Great episode. Awesome music!!
Imagine a country where you almost die and are then bankrupt because of medical bills! Sounds like something from Victorian England.
We Americans don't have to imagine it -- we live that travesty every day.
Fungal infections are horrifying. Truly some of the worst things we see in heme/onc. We really can’t reliably kill fungus effectively. We often have to subdue it as much as we can and hope the immune system comes back in time. For the CNS, it’s hard because the immune system is far less active there. So this was a hard listen, and did an exceptional job illustrating what a crime against humanity this whole ordeal was for people. There are some incredibly promising new drugs in the pipeline and can only hope and pray the FDA chooses to make cancer, bone marrow transplant, organ transplant, and other vulnerable patients-including children- a priority.
As a medical writer working in CME who has done a lot of heme/onc programs, I agree!
This was crazy awful story 😭 great research.
Great episode! I had listened to "Kill Shot" by Jason Dearen about this case and was shocked by the outcome. Always great to hear your take after extensive research. Thanks for all you do!
When you realize how many things can happen when people drop the ball or mess up, it makes me nervous AF. It's like they are so concerned going after pain meds they stay ignorant to everything else.
"All healthcare is a joke. Just do your best not to get sick." 😳 oh
Great ep. ACC!
As someone who almost died from meningitis at 16, thank you for this episode.
Terrifying episode. I used to think "don't let medicine start cutting on you" but now it's a risk even for something simple. Having worked in quality labs as soon as I heard the CEO was like, 'if it came to me I would have checked' it was a HUGE red flag and I knew we were in for it for the rest of the story. I appreciate when you drop in a source, I love more books to read! Excellent job (and deformr as well, the music matched perfectly). Top 10 episode right here, and perfect ending quote.
On a different note, I find this statement at 57:33 from Paul Shaw, the lawyer of Glenn Adams Chin very confusing: ". . . Arrested him in front of his wife, 6-year-old daughter, 2-year old son, and 66-year-old grandmother." But it was made clear that Chin was 49 years old. Pray tell how could a 49-year-old man have a grandmother who is only 17 years older than him???
Yeah, not sure why his lawyer referred to her that way. It was Glenn's mother-in-law, the grandmother of his children.
Hope this makes members of a certain political party who believe that regulations are bad, to rethink that position. People DIE and get permanently INJURED when companies are allowed to ignore regulations or when there simply aren't any regulations!
Great episode. Deformr especially killed it. Music was intense af
Yay! Been craving a new episode! Thank you for all ya do!
Love when you dig up stuff for industries I'm in. Love you ACC.
Thanks man need this today
Also, the production on this is phenomenal 15 min in. Bravo y'all
It's crazy how many times epi doesn't seem to work intraoperatively 🙃