In the last few months, my doctor sent me to a local pharmacy that makes special pharmaceutical compounds for various illnesses. In this case, I had a bad cold and they made a compounded cough syrup. My doctor felt it would do a better job than something from a regular pharmacy. It did. The pharmacy does good work and is very careful in the types of compounding provided. The owner told me that he would never undertake compounding that would be injected into the spine. The task is too dangerous and complex. He refuses. Now we have an outbreak of meningitis contracted from contaminated spinal steroid injections. The deaths and numbers are growing daily. Here is the problem. Compounding pharmacies are supposed to provide customized medications for individual patients but, in many cases, that has turned to bulk manufacturers. These companies have avoided Food and Drug Administration rules because small compounding pharmacies are typically regulated by state pharmacy boards. We could all say that the bulk manufacturers will learn from this mistake but back in 2002 there was another outbreak where the same steroid was contaminated with a different fungus. There have been no significant law changes to protect the patients since that outbreak in 2002. Reportedly, there was a 2006 letter from the FDA to the New England Compounding Center, involved in the current outbreak that the pharmacy was acting like a drug manufacturer. Look, for a country that prides itself on healthcare we need to get a handle on what it takes to make sure this does not happen again. From my vantage point, this outbreak could have been prevented if someone had paid attention to the lessons learned in 2002. Big business might have failed us on this tragedy.Customized Medications