The Sacklers have ingratiated themselves at the highest levels of society using a fortune that's at best built on a product of dubious value, and at worst obtained at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of people. I think this piece points to a big problem: we worship money and those that accumulate it, and often ignore the question of how much societal value was created in exchange for it. The least we can collectively do is not confer status and prestige upon those who make money in a destructive way. I love the line of inquiry in this piece because it puts pressure on the high-society keepers-of-culture whose admiration the Sacklers likely most crave.
FYI you can also see an interview with the author on Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the...
(disclaimer: I am friends with the author)
It should simply be illegal to advertise prescription medications.
"Ask your doctor about Klonopin today"
"Ask your doctor about coronary artery bypass grafting today"
One of these sounds completely ridiculous, and the other sounds commonplace. They should both sound ridiculous, because they're both equally completely ridiculous.
The idea that the patient should be influencing the treatment decisions of medical professionals based on things they saw on television is just absurd. It should be illegal. Doctors are all complicit in it, that should be considered medical malpractice, but doctors are put in an impossible position on this stuff and I understand why they do it.
Healthcare in general is just such a goddamn mess. There are so many completely obvious ways to improve it, but it's impossible to implement any of them, and in the meantime people just keep losing their loved ones early to all the inefficiencies and waste and stupidity.
And all the politicians just want to get their stamp on it to show their constituency how caring and benevolent they are, but they're politicians so all they're actually capable of doing is fucking everything up. So they all just keep grandstanding and fucking everything up and it just gets worse and worse every year.
I was on Oxy for about a month after smashing one of my vertibraes into pieces in a climbing accident, I was prescribed more than three times as much. I walked through hell to get out of that crap; nothing else I've encountered even comes close, including heroine and cocaine. There are several natural, less addictive and less harmful methods for treating chronic pain; cannabis, mushrooms and meditation among others. Pharma is all about creating return customers; profits, at any cost; the people involved in creating this mess have some serious karma to deal with in the near future.
Very good write-up from Esquire, I'm thoroughly impressed with the article.
That said, my visceral emotional response is strongly negative especially when reading the following paragraph:
>In May, a dozen lawmakers in Congress, inspired by the L.A. Times investigation, sent a bipartisan letter to the World Health Organization warning that Sackler-owned companies were preparing to flood foreign countries with legal narcotics. “Purdue began the opioid crisis that has devastated American communities,” the letter reads. “Today, Mundipharma is using many of the same deceptive and reckless practices to sell OxyContin abroad.” Significantly, the letter calls out the Sackler family by name, leaving no room for the public to wonder about the identities of the people who stood behind Mundipharma.
Aren’t the doctors to blame for this as well? It always surprised me how quickly and easily they prescribe serious painkillers. A few years ago I had a tooth pulled, and the doctor gave me prescription painkiller. In the end, I ended up using regular ibuprofen, and that was more than enough.
I wonder how much of this comes pharmaceutical sales reps pressuring the doctors to use their medicine. That whole system seems broken and unethical to me.
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." —Balzac (apocryphal)
In America, we worship people that create great fortunes. We idolize them and consider them geniuses. The source of their wealth is not important, even if it is obviously illegal or immoral. The only consideration is whether they built a successful business and managed to retain most of their money. This is the dark side of capitalism and the profit motive.
In my experience with local philanthropy, there are donors who have no interest in "naming opportunities" and those for whom it is all about the name. To me it says a lot about the character of the donor if they specifically want as little fuss as possible about the donation, and especially if they do not want something named after them. It is the cause they support, not their own egos. Personally, the more often I see a particular donor's name attached to a building, the less admiration I have for the person. So for me the ethical defects of the company are consistent with the desire for the family name to be emblazoned everywhere.
Free Splunk app that shows how to detect anomalies in drug prescriptions including anomalies in narcotics prescriptions and fraudulent providers (doctors):
https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/3693/
Comes with 2014 medicare dataset. All supporting data can be downloaded from data.cms.gov
Story: https://www.splunk.com/blog/2017/09/28/building-a-60-billion...
Regardless of how it started, I'm confused as to why/how this crisis has been allowed to persist and grow for so long. No checks? No balance? Zero to epidemic and nothing to prevent it?
Wow, and this has been known for years...and yet OxyContin is still legal in the U.S. and being sold every day.
It's interesting how HN has near-universal disdain for people covertly making billions off an addictive product.
But much of our industry is explicitly, openly trying to create addictive experiences.
I'm reminded of that line from Chinatown. "Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?" Is there really no point of diminishing returns, where you can tell yourself you've made enough money?
Ah Mr Sacklers, I have been waiting for you. It is time to pay back for your crimes, and you will not leave until the very last cent has been repaid. Indeed what you have sown, you will surely reap.
Why don't we just rip their bodies apart? Why don't we rip their arms and legs off?
Sad. Hope the family gets what's due -- being burnt alive would be a good start.
The thinly-veiled anti-Semitism of this article is abhorrent. Going after a family like this is shameful, the real people to blame are those taking drugs with solid medical uses and abusing them. Ever try to recover from surgery w/o painkillers? Pray you never do, you'll be thanking the Sacklers.
I love how the article switches between OxyContin and opioids throughout the article, particularly when talking about deaths. It's a clever way to include drugs like heroin, fentanyl, etc in the numbers to inflate them and make the story more gripping.
Of course it's silly to hold OxyContin's manufacturer responsible for all opioid deaths.
... Medical Advertising Hall of Fame...
This is a real thing.[1] They really give out awards for medical advertising. Typical writeup: "Ambien dominated the insomnia market like few products ever have. Our goal was to introduce a new way of thinking about sleep, and to introduce Rozerem as a new option for the treatment of insomnia. In order to take down Goliath, Rozerem needed to spend BIG. $200 million in broadcast media spend big. With millions of eyeballs being driven to the website we had to ensure that we provided a seamless, immersive brand experience with absolutely no tradeoffs."[2]
It's am award program for scumbags.
[1] https://www.mahf.com
[2] https://www.mahf.com/digital-pioneer-award-winners/