Tom Harkin predicts bipartisan solution in meningitis outbreak

Originally published: November 19, 2012 12:22 PM
Updated: November 19, 2012 5:00 PM
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

The Democratic chairman of a congressional panel investigating a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak linked to compounded steroids predicted on Thursday that U.S. lawmakers would take actions to prevent a similar public health disaster.

The lawmaker, Sen. Tom Harkin of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, predicted that his panel would find a bipartisan solution that would protect small drug compounders from regulations that could mean higher compliance costs.

"In the face of such a tragedy, it is natural to want to take action. And we will," Harkin said at the outset of a hearing to probe the cause of the outbreak linked to Framingham, Mass.-based pharmacy, New England Compounding Center, which has killed 32 people so far.

"What is important to remember, however, is that drug compounding is essential and that most pharmacies that compound do so on a vastly smaller scale than NECC."

Harkin's views were echoed by Senator Pat Roberts, a KansasRepublican, who angrily recounted earlier legislative efforts to tighten oversight of large compounders that were defeated by political opposition reinforced by industry lobbying.

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