Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
If you read Keefe’s 2017 article in The New Yorker about the slippery Sackler family, then you must read his book about the slippery Sackler family. There is so much more!
The Sacklers, philanthropists and producers of the blockbuster painkiller, OxyContin, were always coy about the source of their money, but the family patriarch, Arthur, made his first fortune in pharmaceutical advertising. In fact, Arthur Sackler all but invented pharmaceutical advertising along with its shady practices. In future endeavors, Arthur and his two younger brothers, Mortimer and Raymond, always referenced their medical degrees, their grasp of science, their research prowess, but the Sacklers were first and always Con Men.
The Sackler’s BIG money came from OxyContin, which was not a new painkiller but a pivot on an old formula. With their usual gift for promotion, the Sacklers took a drug used primarily for cancer pain and marketed it for pain of any kind. Addressing addiction, always a concern with opioids, the Sacklers claimed that their special patented pill coating would obviate the risk of addiction. In short, not true. The company knew it and sold even harder in the regions and neighborhoods where the Oxy abuse was rampant.
By this time, Purdue, the Sackler’s privately held pharmaceutical company, was supporting a lot of Sacklers—Arthur, three wives, four children; Mortimer, three wives, eight children; Raymond, one wife, two children. The family lived large, with all the accoutrements of wealth–multiple residences worldwide, art collections, private jets, yachts, and large donations to the correct institutions —with naming rights.
As we know, it all came tumbling down. Complex litigation is ongoing, but as part of Purdue’s bankruptcy settlement, the Sacklers are expected to pay between $5 and $6 billion dollars and give up control of their company. $750 million of that settlement will go to individuals who became addicted to Oxy and the families of those who died from overdoses. Controversially, as part of the settlement the Sacklers are given immunity from future civil suits
Many institutions who displayed the Sackler name on a building, wing, or wall chiseled it off, including seven named exhibition spaces at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I know the size of the book is daunting, but it reads like an excellent novel (or a season of Succession)! Infidelity, greed, fraud, obsession, sibling rivalry, and some rather interesting science.
WHAT OTHER REVIEWERS SAY
The Times (London): “Empire of Pain reads like a real-life thriller, a page-turner, a deeply shocking dissection of avarice and calculated callousness…. It is the measure of great and fearless investigative writing that it achieves retribution where the law could not….Exhaustively researched and written with grace and gravity, Empire of Pain unpeels a most terrible American scandal. You almost feel guilty for enjoying it so much.”
WHO WROTE IT
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. Empire of Pain was awarded the Baillie Gifford Prize for the best nonfiction book published in the English language.