“Empire of Pain”

[ndrosen]

I have been reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family, and about the opiate epidemic. Arthur Sackler, the patriarch, comes across as a man of great ability and extraordinary energy, a physician, medical researcher, advertising man, journalist, and collector of Asian art, but also as unscrupulous, and quite capable of lying about the safety and effectiveness of drugs. In his day, Miltown, Librium, and then Valium were the pharmaceuticals at issue.

I have only read part of the way through the book, so I’m not yet informed of what Mr. Keefe has to say about the involvement of Purdue Pharmaceuticals and the Sacklers with the promotion of OxyContin and other more recent scandals. I also reserve judgement about how far the pharmaceutical manufacturers are culpable for people misusing the drugs they manufactured.

I’ll try to read further; the No Strings Attached Book Club discusses the book next week.