Oncologist countersues government in unregulated medicine case

Robert L. Carter, a Joplin oncologist who was ordered by a federal court to pay $2.2 million after he treated patients with unregulated cancer drugs, wants some of his money back. He is suing, saying that federal prosecutors overstated the amount his practice paid for the unregulated medicines.

The judgment against Carter included drug purchases he supposedly made in June of 2011, one month after his practice was destroyed in the May 22 Joplin tornado, according to the lawsuit.

Carter, 76, was one of several doctors targeted by federal prosecutors as part of a nationwide crackdown on the importation of unregulated medicines. The charges were a byproduct of a counterfeit drug scandal that led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate dozens of physicians who ordered drugs from a network of companies that brought fake cancer drugs into the U.S. Carter was never accused of selling fake drugs

Three years later, federal prosecutors followed up, charging doctors around the nation with selling drugs that hadn’t been approved by the FDA.

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