Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe. Patrick is a writer and an investigative journalist. He is published in The New Yorker, Slate, and The New York Times Magazine. Patrick is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Empire of Pain is certainly an unbelievable and immense work. This brings full circle the Sacklers, Purdue Pharma, and the opioid crisis.
This is the first book of five that I chose to read to understand the crisis. As a result, this serves as the best way to cross over to additional valuable books addressing the opioid crisis.
In fact, the Sacklers via Purdue Pharma, led to millions into addiction. Hundreds of thousands were killed by OxyContin.
In fact, Patrick’s effort is overwhelming to begin with and this makes it the best choice in my opinion. Accordingly, this book is difficult to put down as the stories gain momentum as the crisis is beginning.
Greed 2.0
The book will certainly shock readers to see first hand how the worst public health crises in American history unfolded. Patrick provides a unique view into this family’s manipulation and lies to launch and sustain their company. Such hubris is rare at this level even in today’s America.
House of Cards
As certainly astounding as it may seem, the Sackler’s calculated on misdirection, a letter claiming narcotics had no addiction threat:
The study had been published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, they would explain, with a title that spoke for itself: “Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics.” In truth, the item in the journal was not a peer-reviewed study at all, but a five-sentence letter to the editor by two doctors at Boston University Medical Center. 1The research it described was anything but comprehensive: it was based on a group of patients who were monitored on a short-term basis during brief stays in a hospital setting. Much later, one of the authors of the letter, Hershel Jick, would say that he was “amazed” by the degree to which Purdue and other companies used this minor academic offering to justify the mass marketing of strong opioids.
pg. 602
For this purpose, the Sackler family paid immense amounts of money to brand their family name across art museums, universities, and hospitals across the globe. With the title wave of information in this book it is certainly challenging to begin understanding (any reader not versed in the crisis) how this family conducted their personal and private businesses.
The Sackler family is certainly responsible for creating America’s opioid epidemic. The Sacklers’ Purdue Pharma not just bent the rules aggressively marketing OxyContin, they destroyed the rules without caution. as they knew the destruction would soon follow. The sheer hubris, for the reader to learn the Sacklers fully knew the risk of addiction, and that thousands of people were dying from OxyContin.
Family profits first
As a result, they only wanted to make their opioids more powerful and popular to continent driving profits:
In June 2010, Purdue presented the Sacklers with a ten-year plan that was projected to generate $700 million each year for the family, for the next ten years.
pg. 862
Their soaring profits also bought the Salkers and army of lawyers and corporate yes men to help sever any opposition or lawsuit filed by grieving families. This also included politicians to placed pressure on public officials and law enforcement to look the other way. Indeed, their unethical sales practices duped doctors with lavish gifts to push Oxycotin as the solution for even the most minor pain — including a toothache.
Rotten to the Core
Furthermore, Patrick is addressing three generations of Sacklers, brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond launched their businesses with an obvious drive for profits, masked as philanthropy. Moreover, his set the stage for their manipulations of Purdue Phamra to drive Americans and the world into opioid addiction. By obviously masking the true impact of OxyContin, Patrick reveals how many teenagers died after taking just a single OxyContin tablet.
In conclusion, Empire of Pain stands alone in telling the story of how they launched and nurtured the ovoid crisis while the family received annual payments of $700 million. The is also a story how the wealthy harm the country, while various institutions provided the family protections with prestige. This is a soul crushing book. Yet once you move into the opening chapter you cannot look away.