Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, A Deadly Disease

In this sobering debut, investigative journalist Dearen charts the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak that killed 100 people across America. Barry Cadden was the corrupt president of the New England Compounding Center, a company that created drugs for individual patients per doctor prescriptions. By taking illegal shortcuts, putting fake names on fake prescriptions, and selling mass amounts to hospitals and pain clinics, he was able to take the company from $5 million in profits to $50 million in under a decade. In 2012, NECC shipped 17,675 vials of an infected steroid to 23 states. The steroid was mostly used for patients with back pain and injected into the spinal cord. There the fungus would grow and cause devastating symptoms and usually death. As the CDC raced to find the cause of the outbreak, Cadden lied to investigators and was later charged, along with the company’s chief pharmacist, with racketeering and murder by the U.S. Attorney’s office. They were convicted of racketeering but not murder, with Cadden getting a nine year sentence, and the chief pharmacist eight. Dearen lays out the facts in straightforward prose. This detailed account of how greed led to widespread suffering and death grips to the end. [em]Agent: Danielle Svetcov, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Oct.) [/em]