KILL SHOT

A disturbing dive into a barely regulated area of the pharmaceutical industry.

If you like fast-paced forensic thrillers à la Kathy Reichs, you’ll love this tale of death and mayhem, from the opening exhumation to the final courtroom drama. But in this story, rendered with panache by Associated Press investigative journalist Dearen, the culprit is not a fictitious evil genius but rather an ambitious and greedy entrepreneur named Barry Cadden, who ran the daily operations at New England Compounding Center, which customized “medicines for special-needs patients.” Such companies face little regulation, which can lead to tainted medications. In 2012, the NECC’s fungus-laced drugs led to the awful deaths of 100 people and made another 693 terribly ill. Cadden and his pharmacist sidekick, Glenn Chin, cut every conceivable corner in their dirty “clean rooms” and worked all the loopholes that allow compounders to sell drugs under the regulatory radar. Then they went well beyond mere loopholes. To add famed Mass General Hospital to their client list, they paid a $5,000-per-month bribe to a pharmacy staff member, who “steered orders for a variety of drugs NECC’s way.” The business was humming along until a fungus called Exserohilum rostratum contaminated 17,675 vials of a powerful pain-killing steroid shipped to 76 hospitals and clinics around the nation—and patients started dying. Dearen crafts a tight, vivid narrative based on thousands of public documents and transcripts, 150 interview sources, and reporting in eight states. He swings the spotlight among the drug makers, the victims, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s medical detectives, and the federal attorneys who finally charged Cadden and Chin with racketeering and homicide. The climax of the trial proves anticlimactic: not guilty on the more serious charges. However, if a case in Michigan “is allowed to proceed to trial, both pharmacists could be back in court facing life sentences in late 2020.”

A harrowing, fast-paced tale of blind greed and sloppy science.