Word: contac
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Edward Marks, 24, a former stockbroker trainee, admitted in an Orlando court last week that he had spiked Contac, Dietac and Teldrin capsule medicines with rat poison in a bid to make money in the stock market. Marks thus became the first person to plead guilty to charges of orchestrating a national drug- tampering scheme...
...pain reliever, the crime seemed so horrible --so peculiarly horrible--that it was hard to believe it would ever be repeated. And yet it has been, again and again. Last February tainted Tylenol capsules killed a Peekskill, N.Y., woman. A month later traces of rat poison were found in Contac cold capsules and Teldrin allergy medication in Houston and Orlando. Two weeks ago, medical investigators discovered that two residents of Auburn, Wash., had died as a result of swallowing toxic Excedrin capsules. Bristol-Myers quickly pulled Excedrin capsules off the market nationwide, but last week Auburn's cyanide scare spread...
Thousands of different kinds of nonprescription capsules continue to be sold today. In all, Americans bought about 10.5 billion doses of these gelatin-cased medications last year. Among the leading brands: Contac (made by SmithKline Beckman), and Sinutab and Benadryl (both made by Warner-Lambert). Nearly all over-the-counter drugs are two-piece capsules, although the single- piece model, used for some vitamins, is perhaps safer. If anyone were to try ; to pierce a single-piece shell, it would probably leak and be very difficult to seal again. In tampering with two-piece capsules, a criminal might be able...
...week Warner-Lambert, a drug company that is also the world's leading supplier of two-piece capsules, announced that it would use a method of fusing the capsules similar to Lilly's in manufacturing its product line. This summer SmithKline has begun using the gelatin band in its Contac and Teldrin capsules...
...company says that Contac will be back on the market this fall. The new capsules will have a transparent coat and will be sealed with red gelatin, which will make it more difficult for anyone to tamper with them. For those who are still wary, Contac will also be available for the first time in elongated tablets called caplets...