The former owner of a Massachusetts pharmacy was sentenced to 10-15 years in prison for his role in the fatal 2012 meningitis outbreak that stemmed from unsterile medications compounded at his lab.
Barry Cadden, 57, is a pharmacist who owned the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. On May 10, a circuit court in Michigan delivered the sentence, which will run concurrently with his federal sentence of 14.5 years that was ordered in mid-2021 on racketeering and fraud charges.
The pharmacy compounded, produced and shipped unsafe steroid methylprednisolone injection solutions to Michigan Pain Specialists Clinic, according to a news release from the state's attorney general office. The medications spurred a national fungal meningitis outbreak, which caused dozens of deaths. Eleven of those were patients at the Michigan clinic.
In March, Mr. Cadden pleaded no contest to 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The yearslong investigation found that he "disregarded sterility procedures in the compounding of sterile medications and ran his business in an egregiously unsafe manner, endorsing laboratory directives wherein cleaning records and scientific testing results were regularly forged and fabricated," the release said. Five other employees have also been charged in connection to the outbreak.