Barry Cadden, the co-founder of a Massachusetts-based specialty pharmacy linked to a deadly meningitis outbreak in 2012, faced the music and pleaded no contest to 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter in Michigan, officials declared today. This plea will add 10 to 15 years to his prison time, to be served concurrently with his current 14-and-a-half-year federal sentence for crimes that include fraud and racketeering.
According to NBC Boston, Cadden's no-contest plea stems from his role at the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Massachusetts. The pharmacy was meant to make drugs for specific patient's treatments but instead illegally manufactured drugs on a large scale without Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The tainted steroids from NECC were linked to about 800 cases of fungal meningitis or other infections, leading to approximately 100 deaths, mostly among patients seeking relief from back pain. Cadden and has associates became the face of a national public health scandal, reaching the attention of a "60 Minutes" investigation in 2013.
In a court appearance on Monday in Livingston County, some 65 miles northwest of Detroit, Cadden formally issued his plea, and he is expected to receive his sentence on April 18. “Patients must be able to trust their medications are safe, and doctors must be assured they aren’t administering deadly poison,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel stated, emphasizing the gravity of trust being shattered between medical professionals and the public.
As reported by CBS News Boston, NECC was shuttered following the revelation that it had been compounding drugs on a scale far beyond its legal remit. The cases of meningitis and other infections spanned 20 states, making it a tragedy of national proportions. The concurrent sentencing offers some measure of closure to the families of the victims, with Cadden being held accountable for his actions that contributed to one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in recent history.
