The California Pharmacy Board is working towards citing and fining 94 California hospitals and their corresponding head pharmacists for not complying with a recall of the contaminated blood thinner Heparin.

In February, drug manufacturer Baxter Healthcare ordered a full recall of Heparin after concerns that the medication was contaminated. They stated that the drug was to be removed from circulation and not administered to patients.

However, in at least 29 of the California cases investigated, hospital pharmacies were thought to still be using the tainted Heparin. While the amounts of the fines are yet to be determined, the hospitals may face fines from both the California Pharmacy Board and the Department of Public Health.

Contaminated heparin is suspected in nearly 100 deaths and many hundreds of injuries over the last year. Several patients have file heparin lawsuits in order to begin recovering damages.

Pfizer’s quit-smoking drug, Chantix, has been removed from the Yokata Air Base pharmacy due to reports of possible adverse symptoms.

Chantix is extremely popular with military personnel, and luckily those at the Yokata Air Force base are not permanently cut off— refills are only suspended until the patient receives renewed approval from his or her physician and opts to continue the medication, at which point the pharmacy will special order the drug.

Though none of the Chantix patients at Yokata have reported any problems with the drug, groups like Public Citizen and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices have been bombarding the Food and Drug Administration with detailed complaints, calling for a black-box suicide warning, the strongest safety alert the FDA can administer.

In the United States, Chantix has been linked to at least 40 suicides and 400 attempted suicides. Other issues supposedly caused by using Chantix include heart rhythm disturbances, movement disorders, glycemic problems like diabetes, and traffic accidents.

If it is true that Chantix is the cause of these adverse reports, the drug was responsible for nearly 1,000 serious injuries just in the fourth quarter of last year. This is more than any other single drug during that same time period.

People who have had an adverse reaction to this or any other drug should consider contacting an experienced Chantix attorney for professional insight.

Another lawsuit has been filed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on behalf of the State of Texas against several generic drug manufacturers.

The manufacturers, Watson/Schein Pharmaceuticals Inc. of California, Alpharma Inc. of New Jersey, Par Pharmaceutical Inc. of New Jersey, and Barr Phamraceuticals Inc. of New York, are being charged with reporting false, inflated drug prices to the Texas Medicaid program.

This is not the first time companies have been charged with falsifying prices; in the past, the Texas Attorney General has successfully won cases against these companies resulting in multi-million dollar settlements.

Some past Texas Attorney General victories against corporate cheaters include:
• Schering-Plough/Warrick Pharmaceuticals in May 2004 ($27 million)
• Dey Inc. in June 2003 ($18.5 million)
• Boehringer Ingelheim/Roxane Laboratories in November 2005 ($10 million)
Baxter Healthcare Corp. in June 2006 ($8.5 million)

A lawsuits against B. Braun Medical Inc. of Pennsylvania and Abbott Laboratories Inc. of Illinois are still pending.