Doctors, Fake Botox, Prison and Fines - Think It Can't Happen to You?

While I told you yesterday about a good use for Botox, here's a botox story that illustrates all the worst parts of medicine, all rolled into one.

The main characters are thousands of innocent patients, plus 200 or more doctors and the two owners of a company that taught those doctors how to inject fake botox (a form of botulism) and make plenty of money.

Beginning in 2004, the doctors attended conferences put on by a company called Toxin Research International, Inc. to learn how to increase their income by offering botox injections to help patients erase their wrinkles. Then those doctors purchased fake botox from the company, at a much reduced rate than the FDA approved drug costs, to inject into patients.

When patients in California became paralyzed, the FDA moved in, arrested the company's owners, pulled lists of all those doctors, and began notifying patients.

It does not appear that anyone died from the injections.

Eventually, Toxin Research's owner was sent to prison for nine years, his wife is in prison for six years, and others involved have received varying prison sentences. Individual states are managing the fates of the doctors involved. Several have received prison time, are paying restitution and fines. The story came to my attention because a doctor in my local area has now been fined by New York State.

Think it can't happen to you? When you think of how medicine can so easily feed greed - it most certainly can.

How could patients have protected themselves? Short of not getting botox injections (I still wonder if we will discover botox is the new smoking), not much.

One thing patients could have done in this case (although, who knew?) is to have looked at the vial being used for injections. It was clearly marked "For Research Purposes Only, Not for Human Use." I would be curious to know whether anyone found that label and actually stopped the injection process.

My only advice is to be vigilant, to remember that American healthcare, especially when it comes to lifestyle and not real medical need, is all about money. Following the money will often give you the real answers you need when it comes to making wise choices about your care.