Baxter Althane disaster

Last updated

The Baxter Althane disaster in autumn 2001 was a series of 53 sudden deaths of kidney failure patients in Spain, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Taiwan, Colombia and the USA (mainly Nebraska and Texas). All had received hospital treatment with Althane hemodialysis equipment, a product range manufactured by Baxter International, USA. [1] [2]

Although official investigations initially found no link between the cases, Baxter Co. eventually published its own findings, admitting that a perfluorohydrocarbon-based cleaning fluid was not properly removed from the tubings during manufacture. Baxter also announced discontinuation and permanent recall of all Althane equipment. Families of most non-US victims were compensated by Baxter voluntarily, while US plaintiffs settled via a class action lawsuit. The company continues to manufacture dialysis machines of a newer design.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited was an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company that was incorporated in India in 1961 and remained an entity until 2014. The company went public in 1973. Ownership of Ranbaxy changed twice over the course of its history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Product recall</span> Request to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects

A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker/seller at risk of legal action.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Medtronic</span> Irish tax-registered medical device company

Medtronic plc is an American medical device company based in Ireland for tax purposes. The company primarily operates in the United States. Medtronic has an operational and executive headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US. In 2015, Medtronic acquired Irish–tax registered Covidien, in the largest U.S. corporate tax inversion in history, which enabled Medtronic to move its legal registration from the U.S. to Ireland. Medtronic operates in 140 countries and employs over 90,000 people.

Benson & Hedges is a British brand of cigarettes owned by American conglomerate Altria. Cigarettes under the Benson & Hedges name are manufactured worldwide by different companies such as Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, Philip Morris USA, British American Tobacco, or Japan Tobacco, depending on the region. In the UK, they are registered in Old Bond Street in London, and were manufactured in Lisnafillan, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, before production was moved to Eastern Europe in 2017.

The Firestone and Ford tire controversy was a period of unusually high failures of Firestone P235/75R15 ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires installed on the Ford Explorer and other similar vehicles. Subsequent investigations linked the failures to accidents that caused 271 deaths and over 800 injuries in the United States dating back to the early 1990s, and more internationally. The revelation led Bridgestone, owner of the Firestone brand, and Ford Motor Company to issue recalls of 14.4 million tires in the United States in August 2000, and more in international markets.

Baxter International Inc. is an American multinational healthcare company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois.

Beginning in March 2007, there was a widespread recall of many brands of cat and dog foods due to contamination with melamine and cyanuric acid. The recalls in North America, Europe, and South Africa came in response to reports of kidney failure in pets. Initially, the recalls were associated with the consumption of mostly wet pet foods made with wheat gluten from a single Chinese company. After more than three weeks of complaints from consumers, the recall began voluntarily with the Canadian company Menu Foods on 16 March 2007, when a company test showed sickness and death in some of the test animals. In the following weeks, several other companies who received the contaminated wheat gluten also voluntarily recalled dozens of pet food brands. One month after the initial recall, contaminated rice protein from a different source in China was also identified as being associated with kidney failure in pets in the United States, while contaminated corn gluten was associated with kidney failure with pets in South Africa. As a result of investigating the 2007 pet food recalls, a broader Chinese protein export contamination investigation unfolded, raising concerns about the safety of the human food supply.

In China, the adulteration and contamination of several food and feed ingredients with inexpensive melamine and other compounds, such as cyanuric acid, ammeline and ammelide, are common practice. These adulterants can be used to inflate the apparent protein content of products, so that inexpensive ingredients can pass for more expensive, concentrated proteins. Melamine by itself has not been thought to be very toxic to animals or humans except possibly in very high concentrations, but the combination of melamine and cyanuric acid has been implicated in kidney failure. Reports that cyanuric acid may be an independently and potentially widely used adulterant in China have heightened concerns for both animal and human health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ford Kuga</span> Sport utility vehicle manufactured by Ford

The Ford Kuga is a compact crossover SUV (C-segment) manufactured by Ford since 2008 mainly for the European market, and now in its third generation. Both front-wheel drive and four-wheel drive are offered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Fuisz</span> American physician, inventor, and entrepreneur

Richard Carl Fuisz is an American physician, inventor, and entrepreneur, with connections to the United States military and intelligence community. He holds more than two hundred patents worldwide, in such diverse fields as drug delivery, interactive media, and cryptography, and has lectured on these topics internationally. Fuisz is a member of the Board of Regents of Georgetown University, where he and his brother created an annual scholarship honoring their deceased elder sibling, and established the first endowed professorship at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

2008 Chinese heparin adulteration, refers to heparin adulteration incidents that occurred in the United States of America in 2008. Pharmaceutical company Baxter International subcontracted the creation of precursor chemicals of Heparin to Scientific Protein Laboratories, an American company with production facilities located in China. Scientific Protein Laboratories then used counterfeit precursors to create the chemicals ordered. Baxter then sold this adulterated heparin in the US, which killed 81 people, and left 785 severely injured. This caught the attention of the media and the USA Food and Drug Administration leading to numerous ongoing lawsuits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gambro</span>

Gambro is a global medical technology company that manufactures products for dialysis treatment. The company is involved in developing, manufacturing and supplying products and therapies for kidney and liver dialysis, Myeloma Kidney Therapy, and other extracorporeal therapies for chronic and acute patients. Gambro was founded in Lund, Sweden, in 1964 by Holger Crafoord and has around 8,000 employees, production facilities in nine countries, and sales in more than 100 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2009–2011 Toyota vehicle recalls</span>

The 2009–11 Toyota vehicle recalls involved three separate but related recalls of automobiles by the Toyota Motor Corporation, which occurred at the end of 2009 and start of 2010. Toyota initiated the recalls, the first two with the assistance of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), after reports that several vehicles experienced unintended acceleration. The first recall, on November 2, 2009, was to correct a possible incursion of an incorrect or out-of-place front driver's side floor mat into the foot pedal well, which can cause pedal entrapment. The second recall, on January 21, 2010, was begun after some crashes were shown not to have been caused by floor mat incursion. This latter defect was identified as a possible mechanical sticking of the accelerator pedal causing unintended acceleration, referred to as Sticking Accelerator Pedal by Toyota. The original action was initiated by Toyota in their Defect Information Report, dated October 5, 2009, amended January 27, 2010. Following the floor mat and accelerator pedal recalls, Toyota also issued a separate recall for hybrid anti-lock brake software in February 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takata Corporation</span> Former Japanese automotive supplier

Takata Corporation was a Japanese automotive parts company. The company had production facilities on four continents, with its European headquarters located in Germany. In 2013, a series of deaths and injuries associated with defective Takata airbag inflators in their Mexican subsidiary Tacata Airbags led Takata to initially recall 3.6 million cars equipped with such airbags. Further fatalities caused by the airbags have led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to order an ongoing, US-wide recall of more than 42 million cars, the largest automotive recall in U.S. history. In June 2017, Takata filed for bankruptcy. It was acquired by Key Safety Systems.

Robin Fields is an American journalist, investigative reporter, and managing editor with ProPublica, an independent, not-for-profit news agency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2011 United States listeriosis outbreak</span>

The 2011 United States listeriosis outbreak was a widespread outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes food poisoning across 28 US states that resulted from contaminated cantaloupes linked to Jensen Farms of Holly, Colorado. As of the final report on August 27, 2012, there were 33 deaths and 147 total confirmed cases since the beginning of the first recorded case on July 31, 2011. It was the worst foodborne illness outbreak in the United States, measured by the number of deaths, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking outbreaks in the 1970s, or tied with the worst, an outbreak of listeria from cheese in 1985, depending on which CDC report is used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">StarLink corn recall</span> 2002 recall of foods containing genetically modified corn

The StarLink corn recalls occurred in the autumn of 2000, when over 300 food products were found to contain a genetically modified corn that had not been approved for human consumption. It was the first-ever recall of a genetically modified food. The anti-GMO activist coalition Genetically Engineered Food Alert, which detected and first reported the contamination, was critical of the FDA for not doing its job. The recall of Taco Bell-branded taco shells, manufactured by Kraft Foods and sold in supermarkets, was the most publicized of the recalls. One settlement resulted in $60 million going to Taco Bell franchisees for lost sales due to the damage to the Taco Bell brand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General Motors ignition switch recalls</span> Vehicle recall by General Motors

The General Motors ignition switch recalls refers to February 6, 2014 when General Motors was recalled about 800,000 of its small cars due to faulty ignition switches, which could shut off the engine while the vehicle was in motion and thereby prevent the airbags from inflating. The company continued to recall more of its cars over the next several months, resulting in nearly 30 million cars recalled worldwide and paid compensation for 124 deaths. The fault had been known to GM for at least a decade prior to the recall being declared. As part of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, GM agreed to forfeit $900 million to the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samsung Galaxy Note 7</span> Android phablet developed by Samsung Electronics

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a discontinued Android-based phablet designed, developed, produced and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Unveiled on 2 August 2016, it was officially released on 19 August 2016 as a successor to the Galaxy Note 5. It is Samsung's first phone with a USB-C connector, and the last phone in the Galaxy Note series to have a physical home button. Although it is the sixth main device in the Galaxy Note series, Samsung branded its series number as "7" instead of "6" so consumers would not perceive it as being inferior to the flagship Samsung Galaxy S7, and to prevent confusion about the order of release due to the same release year (2016).

References

  1. "Baxter Dialyzer Recall". Major Recalls of Organ Replacement Devices. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  2. "Baxter Faces Suit On Dialysis Deaths". New York Times. November 14, 2001. Retrieved 12 October 2013.