This is a true story and no names have been changed to protect the guilty. In August 2002, Cheryl Eggert, a Quality Control Manager for Glaxo, Smith, Kline, (a huge pharmaceutical company with 80 plants world wide) wrote a letter to her boss (VP of QualityControl)
regarding the problems with the manufacturing processes at numerous plants around the world. But the Cidra plant was by far the worst with what Ms. Eggert saw as shoddy oversight of the entire manufacturing process. Ms. Eggert said that the Cidra plant had 9 serious problems including contamination of medicine and wrong drugs put in the wrong bottles. She told her boss that the plant should be shut down immediately and recall the drugs ASAP.
Ms. Eggert's alarm went unheard. GSK told her that the plant just had a FDA inspection in July 2002 and had passed. So her concerns were not valid. Ms. Eggert continued with her very real concerns until April 2003. That's when GSK laid her off due to what the company called a reorganizing. Ms. Eggert saw it differently, so she became a whistleblower to alert the FDA. For years, GSK stated that there were no problems with their plants and all was well. Well, well, well, in November 2010, GSK plead guilty for allowing adulterated drugs to be sold. GSK paid $750 million dollars in fines.
What concerned me the most is that since GSK plead guilty, they had to have known about the problems, but still allowed adulterated drugs to be sold. It is obvious to me that GSK had no common sense what so ever and that the bottom line, (money) was more important then the health and safety of the people who took their medicine. Shame on GSK and shame on the FDA for not finding the problems themselves during their inspection!
Common sense still rules and greed still drools!
Til next week.
Peter
No comments:
Post a Comment