BANNED MEDICATIONS SURFACE IN CALIFORNIA

Medications banned or highly restricted in the United States because of
severe, and sometimes fatal, side effects are being smuggled in from Mexico
and peddled out of back-room shops across Southern California.

These potentially dangerous drugs, which multinational pharmaceutical
companies market in Mexico where regulations and enforcement are less
stringent, have shown up consistently in more than 70 raids during the past
year of markets, dress shops and swap meets catering to Latinos.

Among the most common drugs seized are a banned painkiller that can cause a
deadly blood disease, highly toxic antibiotics and a Mexican arthritis drug
that can knock a person's adrenal gland dangerously out of whack.

Officials fear numerous children and adults are becoming ill, or even
dying, after using the medications without anyone connecting their symptoms
to the drugs. But no one is tracking the extent to which the drugs are
harming people.

Some doctors say the painkiller, dipyrone, has caused the deaths of at
least four children in California and Texas. The cases were not part of any
official reporting system but were discovered through interviews with
several dozen doctors, pharmacists and public health officials.

"It gives me the shivers just thinking about it," said Gregory Thompson, an
associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Southern
California Medical School and co-leader of a Los Angeles County task force
cracking down on the illegal sale of the pharmaceuticals. "Those four
(cases) are just the tip of the iceberg."

For three months, the Los Angeles Times followed the trail of the
restricted drugs.

It begins in Mexico, where many people turn to self-medication in the
absence of accessible health care, yet where little is done to restrict a
number of dangerous drugs. As people move north, so do the drugs. The
medications most preferred by Mexican immigrants are smuggled through a
porous border for sale in the back rooms of shops in Latino areas, mostly
in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The underground sale of Mexican-marketed pharmaceuticals sparked public
outrage earlier this year when two Orange County infants died after
receiving treatment in back-room clinics. Neither of the children died from
drugs described in this story, but their deaths raised questions about the
medications sold in the back-room pharmacies.

One of the drugs, dipyrone, was taken off the U.S. market in 1977 because
it can destroy the body's ability to fight even minor infections. The drug
is the most common medication found in back-room shops. In a recent raid in
Los Angeles, officials found 11 boxes of dipyrone children's liquid, nearly
200 injections, 55 boxes of suppositories, a dozen boxes of pills and
numerous cough syrups, cold medicines and vitamin shots containing the drug.

Dipyrone, banned or withdrawn in at least 22 countries and severely
restricted in nine others, is thought by some doctors and public health
advocates to cause at least 2,000 deaths a year worldwide.

At the same time, safe, cheap alternatives for dipyrone include aspirin,
ibuprofen and Tylenol.

"It's just a shock and it's very disturbing," said Dr. Philip Lee, emeritus
professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine
and a former U.S. assistant secretary of health and human services. "We've
come a long way in the U.S. to get away from some of this and now we're
seeing a return of some of the worst practices."

Drug company officials say the concerns about their drugs in the United
States are exaggerated by a hyper-vigilant Food and Drug Administration.
The medications are widely - and legally - used with little complaint in
Mexico, and the officials stress that those sold in Mexico were not
intended for use in the United States.