Barry Cadden, 57, former owner of New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, Massachusetts was sentenced to 10–15 years’ incarceration for his role in the deadly 2012 nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak, announced Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Cadden pled no contest to 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter in March. In 2012, a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak resulted in 64 deaths, 11 the result of injection treatments at the Michigan Pain Specialists Clinic (MPS) in Livingston County. Patients at the clinic were given epidural injections of the steroid methylprednisolone, which was compounded and produced at Cadden’s NECC in Massachusetts and shipped to MPS. Donna Kruzich, Paula Brent, Lyn Laperriere, Mary Plettl, Gayle Gipson, Patricia Malafouris, Emma Todd, Jennie Barth, Ruth Madouse, Salley Roe, and Karina Baxter died as a result of being injected with the contaminated drug.
Cadden 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 Department of Attorney General began investigative action against Cadden in 2013 and charged him with 11 counts of Second-Degree Murder in 2018. In 2017, he was found guilty in a federal court of 57 criminal charges and would eventually be sentenced to 14.5 years’ incarceration. Today’s sentencing will be served concurrently with the federal sentence.
