Cleaning Up the Drug Industry Lauren Bringle Lauren Bringle, Yahoo! Contributor Network Jul 15, 2013 "

In 2012, nearly 700 people became ill, and 53 people died from Meningitis due to contamination found in the steroid Methylprednisone acetate that is typically used in injections to relieve back pain. The New England Compounding Pharmacy, which compounded these steroids, has since filed bankruptcy and the Food and Drug Administration has stepped up their oversight on compounding pharmaceutical facilities.

However, in May 2013, the FDA received seven reports of patients who had negative reactions to steroid injections that were compounded by a Tennessee facility. At least one of these infections was of a fungal nature.

Today, contamination is a widespread issue. People are getting sick, failing drug tests, and dying from a lack of clarity, cleanliness, and oversight within the drug industry.

Dr. Darren Burke, PhD, the CEO and founder of Rivalus, a company that creates filler-free and hazard-free supplements for professional athletes, maintains that many supplement companies have similar problems with clarity and oversight. These companies add ingredients that are banned in professional sports to increase the efficacy of their products for athletes. However, these banned substances are causing many athletes, often unknown to themselves, to fail drug tests. Rivalus products, on the other hand, have shown up free of banned substances in nearly 20,000 drug tests.

Dr. Burke mentions that to increase their profits many companies build their products in low-grade facilities with few quality controls. Some have dirt on the floor, and cross contamination is a frequent issue when supplements are created on the same line as banned or dangerous ingredients.

That is why Rivalus employs a third party testing organization called Informed Choice. Organizations like Informed Choice randomly select products from store shelves to test rather than accepting samples directly from the manufacturer. Rivalus believes this random testing is superior to other choices, because it does not allow for formula changing after testing

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