The library will be closed Sunday, March 31st, for Easter

Memorial Hall Library

Kill Shot -- The Untold Story Of The Worst Contaminated Drug Crisis In U.S. History - Virtual Author Talk

Thursday, March 4, 2021 - 7:00pm

Join Jason Dearen for a presentation based on his acclaimed new book, Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, A Deadly Disease. Learn about the true crime story of America’s deadliest drug contamination outbreak and the greed and deception that fueled it.

Register directly on Zoom HERE.

About The Book: Two pharmacists sit in a Boston courtroom accused of murder. The weapon: the fungus Exserohilum rostratum. The death count: 100 and rising. Kill Shot is the story of their hubris and fraud, discovered by a team of medical detectives who raced against the clock to hunt the killers and the fungal meningitis they’d unleashed. “Bloodthirsty” is how doctors described the fungal microbe that contaminated thousands of drug vials produced by the New England Compounding Center (NECC). Though NECC chief Barry Cadden called his company the “Ferrari of Compounders,” it was a slapdash operation of unqualified staff, mold-ridden lab surfaces, and hastily made medications that were injected into approximately 14,000 people. Once inside some of its human hosts, the fungus traveled through the tough tissue around the spine and wormed upward to the “deep brain,” our control center for balance, breath, and the vital motor functions of life. Now, investigative journalist Jason Dearen turns a spotlight on this tragedy–the victims, the heroes, and the perpetrators–and the legal loopholes that allowed it to occur. Kill Shot forces a powerful but unchecked industry out of the shadows.

About The Author: Jason Dearen is an award-winning investigative journalist for the Associated Press and was a 2018-2019 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. His work appears regularly in hundreds of newspapers and websites, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, and The New York Times. He has twice been nominated by the Associated Press for the Pulitzer Prize. Dearen grew up in California and attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He lives with his wife, a law professor.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Tewksbury Public Library. Presented in collaboration with libraries in Andover, North Reading, and Wilmington.

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