I've heard of only one kit of Muskin Hypers dead so far. Seems the be the least of the evils at this point.
On the other hand, I haven't seen anyone with dead Avantium sticks. Probably because there are so few of them out in the wild. AFAIK, they all used early chips similar to the first batch of Kingston from the Egg which seems to be a bit more reliable.
I have to agree on the OCZ statement also. Seems odd they stop using the chips unless they had indeed seen the failures. I'm just going to assume they weren't too thrilled about admitting to the failures publicly. Glad to see them honoring the warranty still though