A great read, and a first-rate emetic. That is, don't read if you don't want to feel disgusted to the point of extreme nausea.
Radden Keefe is the author of the wonderful Say Nothing: a True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. In Empire his brilliant research and storytelling combine to shed light on the Sacklers, the extraordinarily secretive family behind Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin. The opioid epidemic in the U.S. is an enormous story which couldn't possibly be contained in one book. Radden Keefe wisely focuses on the extended family at the crisis' heart. The founding brothers are Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, who came of age in Depression-era Brooklyn in an immigrant household, worked ferociously hard, and became medical doctors, pharmaceutical executives, and marketing geniuses. It was Arthur Sackler who spearheaded the marketing campaign for Valium as a drug so safe that it should be used widely and often for any manner of emotional distress.
The Sackler strategy of de-stigmatizing a powerful drug worked even better for Oxycontin. The genius, again, lay in convincing doctors, and the public, that a morphine product had uses well beyond the standard end-of-life cancer palliative. Back pain? Oral surgery? Fear not! The poppy makes us all feel better, and it's perfectly safe. It would be funny if not for the dead, by many counts at least 500,000 and growing.
Alas, the marketing is only the tip of the perfidy iceberg. Read on, and keep that Pepto Bismol handy. (speaking of pharmaceutical marketing...)
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