Doc Befriends Captive Saudi Princess; Psych Hospital Violence; Black Market Ozempic

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Physician Befriended Captive Saudi Princess

After years of working for the Saudi royal family, a physician from Texas realized his employers were keeping their daughters hostage — and that he was complicit, according to the New Yorker.

Dwight Burdick, MD, was a private physician to the Saudi royal family for 20 years, serving on King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s medical team. One day, his employers asked Burdick to sedate Princess Hala, the king’s daughter, because she had gone wild with a knife. This request concerned Burdick.

“I did my method of sedating a patient, which is to talk with them,” he told the New Yorker.

Hala told him that she and her three sisters were being held captive. Burdick reviewed the daughters’ medical charts and realized the princesses had been regularly chemically immobilized and had unlimited access to cocaine, alcohol, and amphetamines. Hala grew to trust Burdick, though he saw she was addicted to benzodiazepines that he was signing off on. He kept working though he also tried to help the princesses when he could, like smuggling them food when it was withheld from them. Still, she suffered malnutrition and substance abuse.

Hala was just in her mid-forties when she died in 2021, and one of her sisters died shortly after. This was years after Burdick left his post and moved back to the U.S. Burdick said he waited until now to speak to the press about everything he witnessed out of fear of retaliation from the Saudis. But now, well into his 80s, and as he puts it: “I’m old, and I’m going to die one of these days, and I want to die with some satisfaction that I’ve done my best,” he said.

Psychiatric Hospital Violence

At a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in Maryland, violence allegedly runs rampant, and leadership has failed to address it despite a history of credible complaints, the Washington Post reported.

There were “years of well-documented but unaddressed complaints about hospital mismanagement and safety that had prompted staff departures and, at times, left employees and patients vulnerable,” according to the article. This included a brawl on a ward, patient rapes, assaults of staff and patients, and tragic patient deaths.

Scott Moran, MD, former CEO of the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, was fired and is banished from the facility after receiving a restraining order from a staffer for making violent threats and sending “racially suggestive messages.” But before that, Moran was promoted multiple times despite credible allegations of bullying and discriminatory behavior, the article stated.

Under Moran’s leadership, Perkins was severely understaffed and suffered critical challenges in delivering actual care to patients, who are all people diagnosed with serious mental illness who have been accused of violence.

The Washington Post spoke with more than two dozen employees at Perkins and reviewed documents and emails, all of which indicate that top government officials knew of complaints at Perkins and about Moran specifically. For instance, when multiple staff were punched in the face by a patient, one requested leadership address the ‘deficits’ that led to the situation. Moran replied to everyone but that staff member with: “Do not reply verbally or in any other way to this. … That is a direct order.” The patient who punched the staff members had actually been put on close observation, but that order had been cancelled without telling all staff.

The Post investigation also details how chronic understaffing, failure to report and investigate dangerous incidents — including assaults and rapes — and patient deaths have proliferated at Perkins.

Beyond Counterfeit Ozempic

Criminals have found ways to sell illicit weight-loss drugs through counterfeits and drug diversion, where drugs are altered or shipped from overseas, according to CNBC.

Drug diversion is a different beast than counterfeit weight drugs, sources said. People may get the real product, unlike counterfeits, but there are still substantial risks.

As part of the investigation, CNBC ordered Ozempic from Laver Beauty, a company based in Boulder, Colorado, that sells a month’s supply for $219 rather than the usual $968. The shipment arrived from China to New Jersey with no refrigeration apart from melted ice packs. Novo Nordisk said the product looked legitimate, though authorized for a Chinese market and the company “cannot confirm the sterility, which may present an increased risk of infection for patients who use the counterfeit product.”

Much of the questionable product is ordered from online shops and social media and illicit sellers are getting better at making convincing packaging.

Sal Ingrassia, the port director overseeing U.S. Customs and Border Protection at New York’s JFK Airport, also reviewed the package and said it was clear the shipment had “broken the legal supply chain.” At JFK there have been 198 Ozempic, 9 Wegovy, and 1 Mounjaro seizures since the start of the year, according to CNBC, though this doesn’t necessarily equate to counterfeits or diverted product. Ingrassia said this is double from last year.

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