Cutter Laboratories
Cutter Laboratories was a family-owned
Cutter incident
On April 12, 1955, following the announcement of the success of the polio vaccine trial, Cutter Laboratories became one of several companies that was recommended to be given a license by the United States government to produce Salk's polio vaccine. In anticipation of the demand for vaccine, the companies had already produced stocks of the vaccine and these were issued once the licenses were signed.
In what became known as the Cutter incident, some lots of the Cutter vaccine—despite passing required safety tests—contained live
The mistake produced 120,000 doses of polio vaccine that contained live polio virus. Of children who received the vaccine, 40,000 developed
A number of civil lawsuits were filed against Cutter Laboratories in subsequent years, the first of which was Gottsdanker v. Cutter Laboratories.[6] The jury found Cutter not negligent, but liable for breach of implied warranty, and awarded the plaintiffs monetary damages. This set a precedent for later lawsuits. All five companies that produced the Salk vaccine in 1955—Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Wyeth, Pitman-Moore, and Cutter—had difficulty completely inactivating the polio virus. Three companies other than Cutter were sued, but the cases settled out of court.[7]
The Cutter incident was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in US history, and exposed several thousand children to live polio virus on vaccination.[3] The NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control, which had certified the Cutter polio vaccine, had received advance warnings of problems: in 1954, staff member Bernice Eddy had reported to her superiors that some inoculated monkeys had become paralyzed and provided photographs. William Sebrell, the director of NIH, rejected the report.[4][clarification needed]
Expansion
Despite lawsuits resulting from vaccine-related cases of polio, Cutter Laboratories successfully expanded its business. Between 1955 and 1960, they purchased:
- Veterinary product manufacturers Ashe-Lockhart, Inc. and Haver-Glover Laboratories of Kansas City
- Plastic manufacturers Plastron Specialties, Pacific Plastics Company in San Francisco, and Olympic Plastics Company in Los Angeles
- An animal feed farm, Corn King Company, in Cedar Rapids
- A plant-derived allergy medicine company, Hollister-Stier, in Spokane, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Atlanta
In 1960, Cutter established Cutter Laboratories Pacific, Inc. in Japan. Annual Cutter company sales had increased from $11,482,000 in 1955 to $29,934,000 in 1962. In the early 1960s, Cutter's catalog listed more than 700 products, and in 1962, the company's assets were "80% greater than when the polio disaster had occurred."[8] Cutter Laboratories was purchased by the German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer in 1974.[1]
Other incidents
In the late 1970s through 1980s, numerous companies, including Bayer's Cutter Biologic division, produced
A 2008 German documentary called Tödlicher Ausverkauf: Wie BAYER AIDS nach Asien importierte (Deadly Sale: How Bayer imported AIDS into Asia)[10] researched the Koate product for hemophiliacs sold by Bayer's Cutter division under full knowledge of its HIV contamination.
References
- ^ a b "Cutter Laboratories: 1897–1972. A Dual Trust". The Bancroft Library, University of California/Berkeley, Regional Oral History Office, Transcript 1972–1974.
- PMID 14043545.
- ^ PMID 15814877.
- ^ ISBN 0-385-24236-0
- ^ Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk, Trident Press, 1966, pp. 313–315.
- ^ Gottsdanker v. Cutter Laboratories, 182 Cal.App.2d 602, 6 Cal.Rptr. 320, 79 A.L.R.2d 290 (Cal.App. 1 Dist. Jul 12, 1960)
- ISBN 978-0-300-10864-4.
- ISBN 978-0-300-10864-4.
- ^ "Waage v Cutter Biological Division of Miles Labs". 22 November 1996. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
- ^ Tödlicher Ausverkauf: Wie BAYER AIDS nach Asien importierte [Deadly Sale: How Bayer imported AIDS into Asia]. Westdeutscher Rundfunk. 12 March 2008. Archived from the original on 15 March 2009 – via Google Video.