"My dad almost killed me," said Leiter, who works with his father at Leiter's Compounding Pharmacy in San Jose, Calif. The Caddens had an unsavory reputation. "I knew they were trouble," he said.
Cadden was the president of the New England Compounding Center, which shut down this month after it was blamed for distributing tainted steroid injections that caused deadly fungal meningitis, killing 23 people to date. Up to 14,000 patients could be at risk, and 294 cases have been reported. Another three people came down with joint infections.
Like many compounding pharmacists nationwide, Leiter wants to make it known that his family-owned business does not operate like NECC, which produced compounded drugs in such high volumes that some groups argue it was a drug manufacturer, not a compounding pharmacy, and should have been under stricter regulation. The Food and Drug Administration raided NECC's Framingham, Mass., facility on Tuesday.
Leiter's grandfather opened his family pharmacy in 1925, he said. Leiter began making compounded drugs for patients since the 1980s, starting with eye drops for patients allergic to the preservatives in most commercially available drops. He now makes 100 to 300 tailor-made prescriptions a day for everything from allergen-free thyroid medication to injectable erectile dysfunction drugs for prostate cancer survivors on whom Viagra has no effect.
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