The following script is from "Lethal Medicine" which aired on March 10, 2013. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Michael Radutzky, Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey, producers.

Last fall, 17,000 vials of a steroid were shipped to clinics and hospitals in 23 states. The drug had to be sterile because patients would have it injected into their joints or their spines to relieve chronic pain. What happened next is the worst pharmaceutical disaster in decades.

The steroid was contaminated with fungus. Forty-eight people have been killed, 720 are being treated for persistent fungal infections. The tragedy has exposed a failure in drug safety. And, in a moment, you will hear the commissioner of the FDA acknowledge that she can no longer guarantee the safety of many high risk drugs.

The steroid was produced by New England Compounding Center and in the six months since the first deaths, no one at New England Compounding has revealed what happened. But tonight they will. As for the victims, this has been an unrelenting horror after just one injection of lethal medicine.

Julie Otto: I've been in the hospital seven times, total of 75 days. I've missed Thanksgiving and Christmas and my son's birthday.

Julie Otto is one of 13 injured patients who met us at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital outside Detroit.

Willard Mazure: I'm on 60 milligrams of morphine a day with no cure in sight. There is no cure in sight for me.

Willard Mazure's morphine is to kill the pain from the fungal infection. We asked the patients to sit down in the first two rows and many of them brought family to the auditorium. Michigan is a hotspot for the toxic steroid, one of 23 states that received the drug from Massachusetts. St. Joseph Mercy has treated 189 patients -- all of whom endure brutal anti-fungal drugs.

Willard Mazure: The medicine is just unbearable. You know, they talk about cancer treatments, and I'm sure they're unbearable too. But this is some unbearable stuff.

This is the fungus. It is a sample that has been grown from the spinal fluid of a patient. The fungus is a form of mold that attacks bone and nerves. The patients who had it injected in the spine have an infection called meningitis which can also reach the brain.

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"60 Minutes": Lethal medicine linked to meningitis outbreak