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The cleverness of the first generation is deeply tainted by the moral and ethical corners the brothers cut. At the Sacklers' private family compound on Turks and Caicos, where staff sprayed down the sand so it wasn't too hot for sensitive feet, it was not unusual for bloated corpses to wash up. In reality, people figured out pretty quickly how to extract the opioid substance, usually by crushing the pill's shell. Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. The Sackler family name adorns a wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Guggenheim, and the Louvre in Paris.

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Empire Of Pain Book

Like Purdue, it is all about the Sackler family: how it transformed American medicine, the key role it played in the opioid crisis... Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes! So, through one lens, the war of USA versus The Sackler Family is over, and Sackler won. And "Empire Of Pain" by Patrick Radden Keefe fits both of these categories. And to me, that felt as though there was a kind of novelistic depth to the character. On the one hand, I'm making these critiques, which I think are very solid critiques, of the practices and motivations of Big Pharma, and the failures of the regulatory apparatus in the FDA. It was palpably uncomfortable because it looked as though the fate of Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers was going to get decided in this bankruptcy court, everything was very sterile and antiseptic, lawyers talking to lawyers, and it felt very out of touch with the reality of the consequences of the opioid crisis. At that time, Purdue was under the guidance of Richard Sackler, son of Raymond. This country was theirs for the taking, and in the span of a single lifetime true greatness could be achieved. "Quality of life means more than just consumption": Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues. AILSA CHANG, HOST: NPR is celebrating Books We Love from 2021. It's about corruption that is so profitable no one wants to see it and denial so embedded it's almost hereditary.

Empire Of Pain Book Discussion Questions

I tend to like to do a lot of interviews for a bunch of reasons, in part because I'm always looking for stories and I really like to corroborate things as best I can, find as many people who were around. 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. During this time, the Sacklers on Mortimer's and Raymond's side were intricately involved in the corporate decision-making and in reaping billions of dollars, routinely drained away from the company. 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. Before OxyContin — Valium. And they wouldn't talk with me for the piece. AB: Oh my god, how frustrating. A battery of lawyers was on hand to prevent the curious from venturing very far. And with the Sacklers, they completely froze me out and none would talk. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Empire of Pain is a ferociously compelling portrait of America's second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world's great fortunes. The photographer Nan Goldin is one: after decades in and out of addiction (Oxy and heroin) she became an anti-Purdue and anti-Sackler activist, staging protests at museums like the Met, where the family donated the wing that houses the Temple of Dendur. RADDEN KEEFE: I think this is a family that's very deep in denial.

Empire Of Pain Book Club Discussion Questions

This prompts a lot of greed-filled plot twists, but Damian, a sweet innocent if there ever was one, is at the center of that plot, and, in the end, he uses the money to help some needy people a continent away. Meanwhile, as the death toll continued to grow (it's estimated that more than 450, 000 Americans died as a result of various opioids, of which OxyContin was the bestselling), the Sacklers took out an estimated $14bn from Purdue, which then passed through a multiplicity of offshore shell companies and bank accounts to furnish their private tastes and, of course, philanthropy. When Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996, the company did so with a very explicit strategy — directed by the Sacklers, who were running the company at the time — to persuade American physicians that this drug was not, in fact, addictive. Oh, you know, just because a pharma company buys me a steak dinner, that would never change the way I prescribe. Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019. A drug that, in contrast to Arthur's claims, led to high dependency, Valium became one of the bestselling medicines of the 1960s and 1970s and Arthur made sure that he received a healthy percentage cut on sales. Like many children of immigrants, their dreams involved getting a good education and working hard to build their fortunes. The opioid epidemic has killed nearly half a million Americans over the past two decades. In a nice play on words, he condemns "the uber-capitalist system under which we live, " showing how it benefits only the slimmest slice of the few while imposing undue burdens on everyone else. And it turns out that's just a big con. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. And that, was what I found most unsettling, because when you go to the doctor there is a tendency to want to put your health and safety in their hands and trust that they are kind of beyond influence. But, I wonder, does Empire of Pain make them scapegoats? Yes, the Sacklers used their money and power and connections.

Empire Of Pain Book Summary

And OxyContin, which is still prescribed and considered effective under the right circumstances, was not the only medication that sometimes became the basis of addiction. He won a 2017 National Award for Education Reporting, and is the recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award as well as the 2018 Immigration Journalism Prize from the French-American Foundation. He set up a business to handle photography for the school yearbook. Their latest settlement offer includes the idea of turning the company into a public trust, and to let creditors reap the proceeds from future OxyContin sales. I think the big question with the Sacklers has always been what did they know and when did they know it? They never faced criminal charges, even though many prosecutors wanted to bring them. His tenure coincides with their entry into the painkiller business with MS Contin, OxyContin's precursor, a slow-release morphine in a pill that patients could take at home. The cars, houses, and cell phone bills of the third generation of Sacklers were paid for with OxyContin money, but they've historically dodged questions regarding from where the wealth derived. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Thank you to all who joined us on May 11th for our very special evening with award-winning author Patrick Radden Keefe as he discussed his newest book, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, with New Yorker writer Jonathan Blitzer. They were pushed to push the highest doses available, because higher doses meant higher profit.

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Like, he's the chief medical officer for the company. An investigative journalist by trade, he reports on many manners of corruption, and his last book, 2019's Say Nothing, had an elevator pitch that sounded anything but mainstream. At the beginning of Arthur's story, he's taking a more humane approach to treating people with mental illness rather than institutionalizing them. Why not sell advertising on the back of them? The Succession series — fictional but based on the ways immensely wealthy families tend to work — is offered to the viewer as a guilty pleasure. Keefe begins his story with Arthur Sackler, the eldest of three boys born to a Ukrainian Jewish grocer in Brooklyn in 1913.

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These two wings of the family refused to participate in the book, and Raymond's heirs — who include Richard, the force behind OxyContin, and his son David — dispatched attorney Tom Clare to send dozens of angry letters to Doubleday, the book's publisher, to try to kill it. But, as my interview subject discovered, all you had to do was remove the coating, crush the pill, and snort or inject it for a quick high. Built by the Dutch in the eighteenth century, the original structure was a two-story wooden schoolhouse. But he doesn't editorialize. Something you're really proud you got? Maura Healey and New York's Letitia James are leading the charge to hold out for more money and a better deal that gets at the family's personal wealth. And then for the judge to say, in a very kind of jargony way, I'm sorry, but that issue is not calendared for this hearing. If you are someone who engages in this kind of sneaky conduct, the last person you want reporting on you is Keefe…. Were there other dead ends besides that? 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. There will not be a live stream or recording available.

But Keefe is a gifted storyteller who excels at capturing personalities, which is no small thing given that the Sacklers didn't provide access... During the bankruptcy hearings, several family members of the deceased tried to speak, apparently hoping for closure. But actually, they've been too cautious. But the Sacklers' philanthropy is perhaps best seen as a figleaf that shields the reputation of a family that made its fortune by lying to doctors about an addictive drug. When the patent for Oxy was about to expire and the Sacklers didn't want to lose profits to generics, didn't they admit that people might misuse the drug?

It has saved, improved, and extended the lives of much of humanit…more Using scientific principles to develop pharmaceuticals is not a criminal enterprise. As he explains, in his final attempt to get answers from the Sacklers, he sent a lengthy memo of queries, by request, to a family lawyer. Keefe, building on two decades of news coverage, as well as his own research and interviews, depicts a family that amassed billions and billions of dollars in private wealth, mainly through the production and marketing of a drug — OxyContin — that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. They used their money and influence to buy off underpaid government employees to approve their drugs. Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. Scientific methods require ongoing testing, feedback, and response.

For a time, when they were small, all three brothers shared a bed. She was a teenager when she arrived in Brooklyn in 1906 and met a mild-mannered man nearly twenty years her senior named Isaac Sackler. As the Covid-19 pandemic begins to fizzle in the U. S., a very different kind of epidemic still rages. By Patrick Radden Keefe. Loved the 'interview' format. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the "China shock. "

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O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy. In the 1970s, Iona Opie picked up this version, which actually has the chorus, in the UK: We three kings of Leicester Square. To get some Christmas cheer. Drink to friends we can't recall. Sung to the tune of Feliz Navidad... Police shot my dog... PoLEECE shot my dog... Police shot my dog, for no good reason, 'cept he was there. Born in a Chelsea stable. There's a good liturgical and biblical rationale for delaying Christmas carol gratification, although if you're someone who never gets sick of singing carols, there's not an argument in the world that will sway you. See, you see, you've gotta come in— (That wasn't three). Christmas carols and other holiday songs, rife as they are with seldom-heard words and phrasings and clever wordplay, are fertile fields for the sowing of. If they are not in the bloodline and inheritance of Israel, they are forever outsiders. But both images actually reflect aspects of gospel truth.

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God rest ye merry, gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. O, star of wonder, star of light. People laugh as I drive by. Rodeheaver-SociabilitySongs, p. 103, "We Three Kings of Orient Are" (1 text, 1 tune). LindaJo H. McKim, Presbyterian Hymnal Companion, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, p. 64, says that Hopkins published this song in his Carols, Hymns, and Songs in 1857, but I have been unable to verify a date before 1865. Myrrh was a spice used in burial. The Herald Angels Sing. A sermon preached by Canon Kenneth Padley, Treasurer.

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Nostalgia is often triggered by something reminding you of a happier time. Christmas Ditty (We Three Kings). I heard these first few songs on cassette tapes recorded from the Prairie Home Companion radio program. Dates to at least the early 1950s - if anything, I'd say this is heard more often than the source, "We Three Kings of Orient Are. At a church I used to serve, we distinguished clearly between Advent and Christmas. On the other hand, Matthew's irony is that foreign sages recognise the truth about Jesus' identity which the Jewish Herod cannot, thus reinforcing the illegitimacy of Herod's rule while simultaneously redefining God's covenant people as inclusive of non-Jews. Ho, ho, the mistletoe. Spinal Tap (ST) was primarily a fictional American rock band created to parody contemporaneous British hard rock bands. We are called out of ourselves and into Christ, to worship in silent awe at the cradle of this baby who is the creative force of the world. No matter when you sing them, may the carols of Christmas give you joy, and maybe even a few laughs. In his big old rusty sleigh. The felt Nativity set from Kyrgyzstan (pictured below, with additional visitors) has an interesting provenance. When we were gone astray. Drink to those two trucks ahead.

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In fact, when I saw a kid in a Barnes & Noble the other day listening to a Christmas carol audio book that kept playing a tinny rendition of "Joy to the World, " I wanted to throttle him and say, "Stop it pronto or Santa's putting thistles and thorns in your stocking, kid. Mondegreens — especially when children, with their limited vocabularies, are involved. Ditto for songs that make fun of us, songs about Mr. Hankey from "South Park" and excessively irreverent songs. 'Til we're cruising. The gold, which represents wealth and royalty, was the sign that he would be king.

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Wrong lyrics karaoke big bird. And two eyes made out of coal. The radio, it's okay. While shepherds washed their socks by night, all seated round the tub, the Angel of the Lord came down.

Verse 4: Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb. And surely you know "While shepherds washed their socks…". You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.