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But the story lives on in Keefe's book — juxtaposed, as it should be, with that of the Sacklers. The worthy winner of the Baillie Gifford prize earlier this month, Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain is a work of nonfiction that has the dramatic scope and moral power of a Victorian novel. Keefe paints devastating portraits of the main Sacklers, their greed, pride and monumental sense of entitlement. Curtis Wright, the FDA official responsible for approving OxyContin, went to work for the company right after leaving public service. Empire of Pain is the biography of a family, designed to make the reader's skin crawl and blood boil, unless the reader is somehow related to a Sackler. They continued to supply providers who, Keefe writes, the company knew from its sales data were almost certainly overprescribing. But the clan, which made its fortune in the pharmaceutical business, was also the money and power behind Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, a potentially addictive pain medication that has played a key role in the opioid crisis. Martha West literally works on the same floor as the Sacklers and becomes addicted to the drug. He promoted the practice of having drug companies cite doctor-approved studies about how well the drug worked, studies that had often been sponsored by the companies themselves. His current subject matter doesn't offer the same opportunities to wrap up the story in a tidy bow, so there's a chance that fans of his may feel less closure than they hoped for after reading Empire.
"In jaw-dropping detail, Keefe recounts the greed, deception and corruption at the heart of the Sackler family's multigenerational quest for wealth and social status. Keefe quotes Richard Sackler, who at the time was the company's president, telling colleagues that "these are criminals, why should they be entitled to our sympathies? " However, Arthur Sackler also found a different focus. Chronic pain is a real thing, and it's miserable. PRK: I started in a two-track way. 20 Take the Fall 262. In addition to being a Shakespearean tale of human nature, Empire of Pain offers several lessons about our world... His book is a testament to the power of the deep document dive, to the importance of talking to that 'category of employee who might have seemed almost invisible to the family, ' from housekeepers to doormen. As Keefe tells Inverse: "One of the biggest choices I made in writing the book was to devote almost a third of the book to the life of the guy who dies before OxyContin. And to me, that felt as though there was a kind of novelistic depth to the character. On the other hand, he literally owned an advertising firm that advertises to doctors. A bustling neighborhood that felt like the heart of the borough, Flatbush was considered middle class, even upper middle class, compared with the far reaches of immigrant Brooklyn, like Brownsville and Canarsie. It's equal parts juicy society gossip (the Sackler name has been plastered across museums and foundations in New York and London, they attend society events with the likes of Michael Bloomberg) and historical record of how they built their dynasty and eventually pushed Oxy onto the market. One of the book's most revealing episodes is from 1999, as the first stories of OxyContin addiction were spreading, when a Purdue corporate officer asked his legal assistant to enter online chat rooms under a pseudonym and learn how people might be abusing the drug. Everyone's favorite avuncular socialist sends up a rousing call to remake the American way of doing business.
There will not be a live stream or recording available. I think if anything, that is a very strong message from this book. 24 It's a Hard Truth, Ain't It 332.
The brothers were feted the world over and no one worried too much about how they came by their money. Loved the 'interview' format. I spoke to housekeepers, doormen, even a yoga instructor who worked for the family. When they met under the great vaulted entrance arch during the lunch hour, it looked, in the words of one of Arthur's classmates, like a "Hollywood cocktail party. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the "China shock. " The employment agency at Erasmus started accepting applications not just from students but from their parents. Arthur stares straight at the camera, a cherub in short pants, his ears sticking out, his eyes steady and preternaturally serious, as though he already knows the score. So, I picked up and re-read Frank Cottrell Boyce's endearing novel Millions. So, through one lens, the war of USA versus The Sackler Family is over, and Sackler won. As he grew increasingly rich, he liked to remain in the shadows, often keeping his name away from the businesses he owned or controlled. "One of the most anticipated books of this spring.
I've talked to doctor friends who say, Oh, of course the pharma companies are always trying to influence us, but I would never be influenced by that sort of thing. Even after the bankruptcy and shaming, Keefe writes, the Sacklers largely held onto their money, because they had extracted most of their fortune from the company and placed it in private holdings. The problem with prescription drugs has far older, more insidious roots in American history than all the hype and hand-wringing of the last several years indicates. This is to say nothing of the millions more whose early deaths by suicide or accident were indirectly caused by opioid addictions, or the millions of survivors whose lives have been derailed by them. Humans have known for thousands of years that medicines derived from the opium poppy can have extraordinary therapeutic benefits but can also be potentially addictive. The family is the Sacklers, who until a few years ago most people knew only as the benefactors of universities and museums, including a Smithsonian gallery named for Arthur M. Sackler. What was fascinating about Richard Kapit is that he described those same traits in the guy he met as a college sophomore, and they were quite charismatic, almost magnetic, exciting traits in a young man where the stakes were much lower. His honors include a National Book Critics Circle Award for his earlier Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. His basic message is simple: "Prior to the introduction of OxyContin, America did not have an opioid crisis. Isaac was an immigrant himself, from Galicia, in what was then still the Austrian Empire; he had come to New York with his parents and siblings, arriving on a ship in 1904. And I got my second Pfizer shot the other day.
It was the emails of members of the family talking about these issues. Hardcover: 560 pages.