Eye drugs that were tampered with were distributed in Newfoundland and Labrador, documents show

Thursday, May 18, 2023 – by John McHutchion

Here’s what you need to know to get the day started:

Eye drugs that were tampered with were distributed in Newfoundland and Labrador, documents show

Pristine vials of a common eye medication were tampered with and delivered to patients in Newfoundland and Labrador, CBC News has found. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Thousands of patients in Newfoundland and Labrador could have received tampered eye medications without their knowledge for several years, documents obtained by CBC News reveal.

The drugs in question are injectable doses of Eylea and Lucentis, used to treat age-related macular degeneration. More than two million Canadians suffer from the condition, the leading cause of irreversible vision loss.

The drugs come in single-use pristine vials directly from the manufacturer, but a whistleblower has uncovered evidence that the vials were being tampered with to create multiple doses.

Ken Dicks, a pharmacist in central Newfoundland, sounded the alarm with provincial authorities in 2015 after he became suspicious that the drugs were being split into several doses at a pharmacy in Ontario and distributed into Newfoundland and Labrador.

"It's incredibly risky behavior that is interfering with a commercial product, which is illegal," said Dicks.

The manufacturer of the drugs and Health Canada say that dose-splitting can increase the risk of contamination and subsequent infection.

Documents dated between June 2015 and August 2016 and obtained under the provincial Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (ATIPPA) — while heavily redacted — confirmed that dose-split products were entering and being distributed in Newfoundland and Labrador.

CBC News has identified the Ontario pharmacy in question as Advanced Care Specialty Pharmacy. The business operated out of a 65,000-square-foot facility in Oakville, just west of Toronto. According to the Ontario College of Pharmacists, the pharmacy closed in July 2021.

Under Section 8 of Canada's Food and Drugs Act, "no person shall sell any drug that (a) was manufactured, prepared, preserved, packaged or stored under unsanitary conditions; or (b) is adulterated."

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Heavy rescue

(Federico Scoppa/AFP/Getty Images)

Residents are rescued in a loader on Wednesday in Massa Lombarda, a small village about 10 kilometres from Imola, after heavy rains have caused major flooding in Italy. The floods have left at least eight people dead and forced thousands from their homes across Italy's northern Emilia Romagna region. The F1 Grand Prix, scheduled on Sunday in Imola, has been cancelled.

In brief

With a Friday morning deadline approaching, WestJet and its pilots don’t appear to be close to working out a deal on a new collective agreement. WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said late Tuesday the two sides remained far apart on key sticking points — especially wages. Early Thursday, the airline began cancelling some flights in anticipation of a work stoppage. Travellers are being told to check the status of their flights before going to the airport. The pilots are poised to potentially walk off the job as of 3 a.m. MT on Friday after issuing a strike notice on Monday. The airline responded by issuing notice that it could lock out its pilots. A work stoppage could happen just ahead of the Victoria Day long weekend. WestJet is offering refunds to passengers who cancel flights scheduled until May 21, and fee-free changes to bookings within the same period. Read more here.

A former firefighter who beat cancer twice has welcomed news that Alberta has made it easier for first responders to get workers' compensation coverage when they face the same disease. "Cancer is a very, very expensive experience," said Lorne Miller, who is now the resilience officer for the Calgary Fire Department. "It impacts all facets of life," he told The Current's Matt Galloway. "My wife is an entrepreneur, so that impacted her because she had to stop working and take care of me, and I went on long-term disability." Miller became a firefighter in 2007, and was first diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma in May 2021. That summer, doctors removed a tumour the size of a volleyball from his abdomen — but his cancer returned in Nov. 2022. After another surgery, he is currently in remission. Read the full story here.

A report from the World Meteorological Organization suggests there is a two-in-three chance global temperatures will temporarily exceed a 1.5 C increase above pre-industrial levels within the next five years. That 1.5 C benchmark matters because it's what the 2015 Paris Agreement and subsequent climate accords have set as a threshold to limit the most catastrophic impacts from climate change. The WMO is "sounding the alarm" over the increase; every fraction of a degree that global temperatures rise, losses and damages are expected to mount. But Canada, especially polar regions that are warming the fastest of all, has already blown past 1.5 degrees of warming over pre-industrial levels. According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the average annual temperature in the country rose by 1.9 C from 1948 to 2021. Read the full story here.

Artificial intelligence may produce many benefits, but left unchecked could negatively impact society and perhaps pose a significant threat to humankind. It's this regulatory conundrum that some U.S. politicians faced at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. The hearing featured testimony from Sam Altman, the head of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, who advocated for a series of regulations to confront the risk of increasingly powerful AI systems that even he acknowledged could "cause significant harm to the world." But Congress has yet to regulate some of the Big Tech companies, like Meta and Google. And the issues Altman and others raised at the hearing on AI also illustrated the challenges facing regulating that industry, some experts say. Read the full story here.

When the WNBA came to Canada for an exhibition last Saturday, it was hailed in part as an opportunity to show young girls that their basketball dreams are possible. "If I were to go to a game in Canada, especially just being able to see people that look like me, that I could potentially fill their shoes one day, I would have had those dreams for myself," said Bridget Carleton, the Chatham, Ont., native who was the lone Canadian to play in the game in Toronto. "And it really wasn't until like my senior year of college where I thought, 'Oh, maybe I can play in the WNBA.'" Carleton, who plays for the Minnesota Lynx, is one of three Canadians who will indeed play in the WNBA during the 2023 season, which tips off Friday. Each enters with something to prove. Read the full story here.

Now for some good news to start your Thursday: Keith and Karen Bratt of Lethbridge, Alta., were celebrating their 30th anniversary in Mexico when they found a wedding ring on the ocean floor. Thanks to a Facebook post that has been shared more than 200,000 times, the ring is now back in the hands of the couple that lost it. Watch #TheMoment from CBC’s The National.

OPINION

Fighting for air filters in schools showed me why Alberta needs an unfiltered public health office

When there are different points of view and complicated evidence, the ability to hear directly and fully from experts is paramount, writes Paul Lu. His opinion piece is part of a series of personal essays the CBC is running ahead of the Alberta election. Read his column here.

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Today in history: May 18

1642: The city of Montreal is founded by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve.

1785: Saint John, N.B., becomes the first incorporated city in Canada.

1920: Pope John Paul II is born Karol Wojtyla near Krakow, Poland.

1980: Mount St. Helens in Washington state is hit by an earthquake, landslide and a massive volcanic eruption. The event left 57 people dead, knocked down approximately 10 million trees and sent ash around the world.