Regulators discover contaminated children’s vaccines
I hate to say it, but I have more bad news to report about children’s vaccines. According to a published report, federal regulators spotted contaminated children’s vaccines and other serious concerns when they inspected a Merck vaccine plant outside of Philadelphia.
In 30 separate inspection days between November and January, the regulators reported a staggering 49 areas of “concern,” one of which included the contamination of bulk lots. Thirty separate days – and 49 areas of concern!? It’s truly incredible.
In December, Merck recalled 1.2 million doses of one of their flu vaccines made by the same plant because of sterility problems found in October. And in another case they even quarantined an entire year’s worth of suspected doses.
Naturally, Merck’s PR machine is working overtime to fend off, deflect, and reassure. The company maintains that no contamination was found in finished vaccines (I don’t buy it), and that the problems are being addressed.
“We are absolutely confident in the quality of our products,” said John McCubbins, Merck’s head of Global Vaccine Manufacturing who is in charge of the plant. How sad (or scary) is it that the head of Merck’s global vaccine operations is also in charge of the plant that has the most problems? What does that say about the quality control of Merck’s vaccines?
In spite of these findings, the FDA has not ordered Merck to stop production. And as for the CDC, that other powerful US government health agency? Well, one of their spokesmen said that the CDC was unaware of the problems with vaccines at the Merck plant.
You know what this means? Right: the FDA and the CDC – the two biggest health agencies in the U.S. government that are responsible for protecting the public from things like, for one, CONTAMINATED VACCINES, do not communicate with one another. I’ve already said it once, but let me say it again: how scary is that?
Cannabis craziness
It’s pretty much standard operating procedure for people who use drugs to be denied a place on coveted transplant lists. It happens all the time – and rightly so. So then why was it headline-making news when 56-year-old Timothy Garon died from hepatitis C after he was denied a spot on a liver transplant list because he was using marijuana?
Well, there’s a catch to this story: Garon was using marijuana all right, but it was marijuana that his doctor prescribed to him. That’s right Garon’s physician, Dr. Brad Roter, authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate his nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite. He wasn’t passing him a joint under the table, either. Washington is one of a handful of states that authorizes the use of medical marijuana.
The problem is, it’s still prohibited under federal law. What a mess.
Tragic stories like this one highlight the need for some kind of resolution in this medical marijuana debate. The fact remains that federal and state laws butt heads on this issue, and I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon.
But there’s no federal law – or even a state law, for that matter – that regulates who does and doesn’t qualify for a transplant. That decision is left up to each individual hospital. At the very least, is it too much to ask for each hospital to at least recognize the law of its own state?
Wherever you stand on the medical marijuana issue, this particularly odd wrinkle in the rules needs to change. Now. Because if a doctor with a patient IN NEED of a transplant is unaware of such a basic law about transplants, I think that speaks volumes.
