Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline -- which is actually headquartered in London -- will be handing $750 million in damages to the U.S. government, a settlement for churning out four years worth of "adulterated" prescription drugs.
The drugs were manufactured between 2001 and 2005 and include:
- Kytril, a sterile anti-nausea medication;
- Bactroban, a topical anti-infection ointment;
- Paxil CR, the controlled-release formulation of Paxil, an anti-depressant; and
- Avandamet, a combination Type II diabetes drug.
If you prescribed any of these drugs, your patients may have received under-strength versions that were clinically ineffective at best and physically harmful in the worst case. For example, Paxil CR tablets that were affected had their component parts split, which eliminated the controlled-release mechanism. Even worse, in some cases these affected drugs were mislabeled and/or comingled, resulting in some bottles containing unrelated drugs.
These more severe errors resulted in the Department of Justice hitting GlaxoSmithKline with a criminal fine. The federal government will collect $436,440,000 of the total fine and individual states will share the remainder.