Book Review
OxyContin: the Story Behind the Opioid Epidemic
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Hundreds of thousands of people have died because of the opioid epidemic. Many factors play into this fact, and this book clearly explains them. The story involves the company that owns the patent for OxyContin, the way they intentionally downplayed and lied about the drug’s addictive nature, the way they courted physicians and especially unethical physicians with this faulty information, and the way they equally influenced the FDA to go along on the ride.
The subtitle of this book sets the story rolling. It is, “The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.”
Who are the Sacklers, you ask? Ultimately, they will be known for their role in the OxyContin story, but before that, the world knew them for their philanthropy.
The family name adorns art museums, universities, and medical facilities around the world. To give just a few examples, there is The Sackler Wing at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim Museum, the Sackler Wing at the Louvre, the Sackler Museum at Harvard, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts, and the Sackler Library at Oxford. It seems no one knew the source of the Sackler family wealth…
