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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe secretive family making billions from the opioid crisis.
Esquire magazine:
[link:http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-oxycontin/?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_news&date=102217|
MaryMagdaline
(6,856 posts)Christopher Glazek does remarkable work. Check out The New Yorker Magazine piece, The C.E.O. Of HIV and many other articles:: www.christopherglazek.com. He has a way of turning complex issues into engrossing stories.
Warning: moral ambiguity abounds.
Initech
(100,097 posts)pecosbob
(7,542 posts)with Pol Pot and that Austrian corporal...mass murderers of epic proportion.
MaryMagdaline
(6,856 posts)One of the interesting tidbits I learned from the article ... the Sackler founder was one of the first to advertise medicines in the New England Journal of Medicine and created the whole phenomenon of advertising medicines.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,032 posts)Emphasis added.
Also a sub-head.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, fifty-three thousand Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016, more than the thirty-six thousand who died in car crashes in 2015 or the thirty-five thousand who died from gun violence that year. This past July, Donald Trumps Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, led by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, declared that opioids were killing roughly 142 Americans each day, a tally vividly described as September 11th every three weeks. The epidemic has also exacted a crushing financial toll: According to a study published by the American Public Health Association, using data from 2013before the epidemic entered its current, more virulent phasethe total economic burden from opioid use stood at about $80 billion, adding together health costs, criminal-justice costs, and GDP loss from drug-dependent Americans leaving the workforce. Tobacco remains, by a significant multiple, the countrys most lethal product, responsible for some 480,000 deaths per year. But although billions have been made from tobacco, cars, and firearms, its not clear that any of those enterprises has generated a family fortune from a single product that approaches the Sacklers haul from OxyContin.
When Purdue eventually pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2007 for criminally misbranding OxyContin, it acknowledged exploiting doctors misconceptions about oxycodones strength.
Irish_Dem
(47,270 posts)ancianita
(36,130 posts)Their rebranding strategy is pure evil, and the AMA is complicit in allowing this "practice" substitute for real treatment.
Now I know why my daughter was constantly asked by every professional who walked in her hospital room to gauge her pain after her laparascopic appendectomy last week.
The cost/benefit of the Sackler family secrecy is what this article attempts to convey -- art philanthropy, and a huge wake of human wreckage and slow jam growth of medical treatment laziness -- thus, malpractice.
Nothing shuts down the body's ability to heal more than opioids, and Purdue Pharma wants every American entitled to his/her share.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)In the late 1990's, we knew Phillip Morris had reluctantly admitted to using added nicotine to their cigarettes.
I am a bit astonished that doctors relied on the company to tell them how to dose their patients,
and today I am STILL astounded at knowing how few Drs. know much substance abuse and addiction. Beyond a few phrases, the concept is not understood much.
Very well written article. Thanks for posting.