The Tylenol Mafia by Scott Bartz Read Free Book Online Page A

Department of Public Health, said on Friday that the cyanide used by the killer was potassium cyanide. Pirl said the particular potassium cyanide from the capsules he tested was a “technical grade,” which is an inexpensive, low purity grade of potassium cyanide typically used in heavy industry, as opposed to the more expensive high purity grade typically used in laboratories. The chemical profile of the cyanide was important, but largely ignored in the developing investigation.

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The Developing Investigation
     
    David Collins had gone to bed one hour before the telephone in his hotel room rang at 3 a.m. on Friday morning, October 1 st . The caller informed him that the lot number on Mary McFarland’s Tylenol bottle, 1910MD, indicated that it had come from the McNeil manufacturing plant in Round Rock, Texas. Tylenol from that lot had been manufactured in May 1982 and then distributed to the Chicago area and states west of the Mississippi River. The Tylenol from Lot MC2880, which had been recalled Thursday afternoon, had been manufactured at McNeil’s Fort Washington plant in April 1982 and then distributed to states east of the Mississippi River and to North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Eastern Wyoming.
    “The fact that the second batch came from Round Rock didn’t say a damn thing to me,” Collins recalled later, “Except that, oh Jesus, now I’ve got two lots to recall instead of one.”
    However, J&J did not actually intend to recall Tylenol from lot 1910MD - at least not initially. A McNeil spokesperson told reporters on Friday morning that the company “wouldn’t make a decision on extending the voluntary withdrawal of its product to additional lot numbers until there was more definitive information about the capsules consumed by the DuPage woman [Mary McFarland].” J&J spokesperson, Marshall Malloy, then confirmed that the company was not issuing a recall for the Tylenol batch labeled Lot 1910MD. But later that day, J&J executives changed their minds and announced a recall of all Extra Strength Tylenol capsules from that lot.
    Though Collins said he didn’t know until 3 a.m. Friday morning that the Tylenol from Lot 1910MD had been manufactured at the Round Rock plant - he must have known all along where that Tylenol had been manufactured. That information was incorporated into the lot number, as required by the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Section 201.18, “Drugs; significance of control numbers,” which states:
The lot number on the label of a drug should be capable of yielding the complete manufacturing history of the package. An incorrect lot number may be regarded as causing the article to be misbranded.
     
    The alpha characters in the lot numbers for the Tylenol manufactured in Round Rock came after the numeric characters (i.e. 1910MD), whereas alpha characters for the lots manufactured in Fort Washington came before the numeric characters (i.e. MC2880). However, it was the first numeric digit of each lot code that actually identified the manufacturing plant. The first numeric digit of the lot codes for Tylenol manufactured at Fort Washington was “2”, and for Round Rock it was “1”.
    The 3 a.m. phone call to David Collins was obviously not made because someone had suddenly figured out that the Tylenol from Lot 1910MD had been manufactured in Round Rock. Collins likely received that phone call because someone at Johnson & Johnson had uncovered an extremely urgent problem regarding the distribution of Tylenol from Lot 1910MD.
    Since the cyanide-laced Tylenol had come from two different lots, manufactured at two separate facilities, officials said they were confident that none of the poisoned Tylenol capsules had been adulterated at either of the McNeil plants. Larry Foster said the fact that the cyanide laced Tylenol came from two sources, but cropped up only in one area “leads us to believe strongly that the problem rests in Chicago.”
    J&J’s initial