For Immediate Release
April 22, 2002

Kansas City Division
1300 Summit
Kansas City, Missouri 64105
(816) 512-8200

List of Drugs Courtney Claims to Have Diluted

Todd Graves, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Kevin Stafford, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Larry Sperl, Special Agent in Charge, United States Food and Drug Administration, Office of Criminal Investigations, issued the following public statement today regarding the Robert Courtney case.

During Robert Courtney's confession in August of 2001, he stated that his drug dilution conduct was confined to 4 chemotherapy drugs, involved only 34 patients under the care of a single physician, and occurred over a discrete period of a few months in the spring of 2001.

At the time of his guilty plea in late February 2002, Robert Courtney publicly acknowledged in the context of his guilty plea that he had, in fact, engaged in the drug dilution conduct he disclosed during his August 2001 confession. At that time, Robert Courtney was silent on whether he had engaged in any other drug dilution conduct.
During the debriefings of Robert Courtney that followed his guilty plea in late February 2002, he has stated that his drug dilution activities were not limited to the conduct he admitted to at the time of his guilty plea.

Although he has not pinpointed the precise date his drug dilution activities began, Robert Courtney has now stated that the dilution of drugs at his two pharmacies began sometime in 1992, and perhaps even earlier. Courtney has now identified in excess of 60 different drugs that he claims were diluted. Courtney has further stated that the drug dilutions were not limited to a finite number of patients being treated by a single doctor but instead affected numerous doctors and a myriad number of patients.

All of the drugs Courtney claims were diluted were administered intravenously or through injections. None of the drugs Courtney claims were diluted were oral medications or dispensed in pill or tablet form.

Federal law enforcement authorities began receiving this information from Courtney in mid-March 2002, and immediately began attempting to identify the patients who potentially could have received a tampered or diluted dose of one or more of the drugs Courtney identified as having been diluted. Computer records obtained from Courtney's Kansas and Missouri pharmacies during the investigation were the best possible data base of existing and known records from which agents could identify potential victims of Courtney's drug dilution conduct. The data base was limited by the types of information that had been stored on the pharmacy computer systems, the accuracy and completeness of the information, and the fact that the Research Medical Tower Pharmacy computer record keeping system only went back to 1993. Federal law enforcement authorities have not been able to verify either the accuracy or the completeness of the computer records. Similarly, the truthfulness of Courtney's dilution claims have not been independently verified by federal law enforcement authorities.

Despite the inability to conclusively confirm Courtney's additional dilution claims, federal law enforcement authorities contacted the appropriate federal public health officials to discuss issues associated with release of the information as a public health and safety concern. Ultimately, the decision was made to enlist the assistance of the appropriate agencies in the States of Kansas and Missouri for the purpose of notifying the physicians whose patients may have received tampered drugs dispensed or compounded by Courtney.

The number of potentially affected physicians in Kansas and Missouri is approximately 400. The number of potentially affected prescriptions in Kansas and Missouri is approximately 98,000. The number of potentially affected patients in Kansas and Missouri is approximately 4,200.

On Wednesday, April 17, 2002, the state agencies in Kansas and Missouri received the information that would permit them to begin the process of notifying the potentially affected physicians. The goal of this notification process is, to the extent possible based on current information, to alert prescribers to possible irregularities in dosing that their patients may have experienced so the physicians can consider medical implications and make clinical judgments on what actions are needed to address patient needs.

Persons who believe they may have received diluted drugs from Research Medical Tower Pharmacy or Courtney's Pharmacy, Inc., should contact their health care provider for guidance. Analyzing the potential impact to an individual patient is a health care issue that depends upon the individual circumstances of each patient and their prescription.

A list of the drugs Courtney claims to have diluted follows, and will be made available as soon as possible on the website of the FBI at www.fbi.gov.