Cadden Email Warned: "People Can Die"

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

BOSTON -Just months before a deadly outbreak swept across the country, the head of a drug compounding firm warned his supervising pharmacist that practices at their company were "a disaster waiting to happen. People can die."
The 2012 email from Barry J. Cadden to Glenn A. Chin was introduced into evidence today as Chin's federal trial on racketeering and second degree murder charges entered its third week.
U.S. Department of Defense Special Agent Sara Albert testified that the June 21 email along with more than a dozen others had been recovered from the records of the New England Compounding Center, where Cadden served as president. Some were also recovered from Chin's personal email.
She testified that other emails covered such topics as shipping drugs before testing, relabeling drugs to make it appear they had been tested, using expired ingredients and and shipping drugs that had never been tested at all.
Both Cadden and Chin were indicted along with a dozen others following a two year probe of the fungal meningitis outbreak which sickened 778 patients in more than 20 states. Seventy six of them died.
Cadden whose 10-week trial on similar racketeering and fraud charges ended in late March, already is serving a nine year prison sentence. He was acquitted on the second degree murder charges.
Albert also testified about a Chin resume retrieved during the investigation in which he claimed to be a supervising pharmacist at NECC since at least 2009. Chin's lawyers had challenged the assertion that he held that title.
In one email exchange Albert read to the jury, Chin informed Cadden that it was too late to give an employee another chance because he already had fired him.
 "Too late. I just canned his ass," Chin wrote.
In a July 25, 2012 email, Cadden stated that there were tests that "we are not currently doing, but should be doing."
In the June 21 email and others Cadden expressed concerns about practices in NECC's two clean rooms where sterile injectable drugs were prepared under Chin's supervision.
In a 2011 email, which also was introduced in Cadden's trial, Cadden warned, "We can't get caught with our pants around our ankles...Ever."
"We can't do what you are currently doing any more. No exceptions," Cadden wrote in another email to Chin.
In other testimony a Michigan pain doctor described how the outbreak unfolded at the clinics where he had administered injections of NECC's methylprednisolone acetate into the spines and joints of patients.
 Dr. Edward Washabaugh of Michigan Pain Specialists described how one victim was stricken just after arriving in London and had to be sent back home. By the time she arrived she had suffered a devastating stroke Washabaugh said.
Even worse were the side effects of powerful antifungal medications victims were forced to take, he said. He said the overall impact caused patients to die from heart attacks and other seemingly unrelated ailments.
He said 19 of the clinics patiens died. Five of them were his.
Anita Baxter, the daughter of a Michigan victim, said her mother suffered a massive stroke and doctors said she was clinically dead.
"It was horrible" she said recalling the scene in her mother's last hours.
Her mother had told her, "I don't want to be a vegetable," so she agreed to end life support. She said her mother had also directed that her body be donated for medical research and, as a result, the cause of her death was eventually determined.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com