New Yorker Article About Purdue Pharma

This is an excellent article about Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, who almost singlehandedly created the opioid addiction crisis due to unscrupulous and ruthless marketing of OxyContin.  I note that they started out marketing Valium and Librium, but more money to be made in the opioids.  Long article but well worth the read.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

You're welcome Leslie.  I am horrified at the billions of dollars the Sackler family now has at their personal disposal due to inflicting untold misery on millions of addicts and their families.  Now that the United States is taking steps to curb the sale of prescription opioids, Purdue and the Sacklers are now marketing them overseas to reproduce the crisis all over again abroad.  The Sackler family tries to remain anonymous, and they have largely succeeded due to the company being privately held and not publically traded.  They try to present themselves as philanthropists and do-gooders while hiding the true source of their wealth.  I am GLAD this article outs them as the amoral greedy people they really are.

She

Yes Saga23, its beyond words.  Especially when you learn that the 3 founding brothers of Purdue Pharma, Arthur, Raymond and Mortimer Sackler were physicians!  What ever happened to "First, do no harm"?  Disgusting.

She

She, thank you for posting this article.  I've read it a few times already and am still wrapping my head around all the different points ...

There are just so many directions that this company has pursued in order to protect their ability to profit from this drug - despite all of the evidence of it's dangers, of it's shortcomings, of the lives that it has wrecked...

Today, the implications of this one brought tears:

"...But Purdue, facing a shrinking market and rising opprobrium, has not given up the search for new users. In August, 2015, over objections from critics, the company received F.D.A. approval to market OxyContin to children as young as eleven.

 

"Forbes estimates that the Sacklers continue to receive some seven hundred million dollars a year from the family companies, and, as the Sacklers are surely aware, the real future of OxyContin may be global. Many big companies, once their sales plateau in America, look abroad. After introducing OxyContin in the U.S., Purdue moved into Canada and England... 

 

"...As OxyContin spread outside the U.S., the pattern of dysfunction repeated itself: to map the geographic distribution of the drug was also to map a rash of addiction, abuse, and death. But the Sackler family has only increased its efforts abroad, and is now pushing the drug, through a Purdue-related company called Mundipharma, into Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.  "

I have to admit that I still can't focus enough to get entirely through the article in one sitting, but the more times I try, the more I feel sorry for our boots-on-the-ground physicians, who struggle to meet their patient's complex needs, with shrinking support from their superiors, pressure to meet quotas, privately funded research muddling the advice on what they can safely prescribe... the list goes on...

I wouldn't want a physician's job, that's for sure - no money would be worth the realization that I caused harm for countless patients because I believed the propaganda that was so intentionally pushed for so many years... it's clear that doctors were, (and continue to be), manipulated because they were/are an essential tool in sustaining the staggering profits of this family.

"...two decades ago, doctors did not know what they know now about opioids and addiction. The Sackler family and Purdue Pharma could have taken responsibility in a similar spirit: apologizing for their role in unleashing a national catastrophe while noting that, during the nineties, they had relied on a series of mistaken assumptions about the safety of OxyContin. But Purdue has continued to fight aggressively against any measures that might limit the distribution of OxyContin, ..."

No amount of philanthropy can atone for this degree of damage if the powers behind the curtain continue to do damage.

Hi JannaBean

<<No amount of philanthropy can atone for this degree of damage if the powers behind the curtain continue to do damage.>>

I agree 100%.  I found this article compelling and I read it all in one sitting.  I just couldn't look away, horrified though I was.

She

Look what's been picked up by the NYTimes this morning:

Permalink: https://nyti.ms/2BAZPTT

Gifts Tied to Opioid Sales Invite a Question: Should Museums Vet Donors?

"In the case of the Sacklers, OxyContin's ties to the opioid crisis have become a public relations blemish."

Seems to me, that the takeaway is that money talks loudest...

(But I'm glad it's at least being talked about...)

Thanks for the article.

<<No amount of philanthropy can atone for this degree of damage if the powers behind the curtain continue to do damage.>>

The sad thing is its not really philanthropy as it is being called if done for the wrong reasons, in this case it seems that it is rather a smoke screen for the family and probably looked upon as a cost of doing business, If as Forbes says the family is receiving 700 million per year using say 10% (70 million) per year as a means to continue this level of income is easy to swallow, I could not swallow what I was doing to the millions of people though.

2trusting

IMO, all institutional recipients of huge donations need to look at the source and act accordingly, but they probably won't.  Why eschew the big bucks when a little moral justification can soothe even the worst conscience?  Money corrupts absolutely, and this proves that maxim.  I despair of humanity often, and people like the Sacklers are at the top of that list.

She