This special report broke the story of a public health crisis affecting hundreds of thousands of people: a nationwide shortage of IV nutrients so drastic that hospitals were hoarding, rationing, and bartering them in order to keep patients from dying. Across the country, patients were developing nutrient deficiencies severe enough that doctors were seeing complications normally found only in the developing world. Robbins found discrepancies in FDA statements and delved into medical mysteries, U.S. and foreign drug policies, and the complicated economics of sterile drug manufacturing to determine how these problems could happen in 21st-century America when they were not happening abroad.
