empire of pain the secret history of the sackler dynasty

And so he did this with any number of drugs in the 1950s and '60s, perhaps most significantly with Valium.Ī CHANG: And how did he aggressively market Valium? And he realized it's not the consumer that you need to advertise these drugs to it's doctors, and that if you can persuade doctors to prescribe a medication, that's where the real riches will lie. But he was very restless and ambitious, and he wanted to do more than just be a doctor. He grew up poor during the Great Depression in Brooklyn to immigrant parents and became a doctor. PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: Arthur was this amazing, protean character. Keith begins this family saga in the mid-1900s with Isaac Sackler's three sons, the eldest of whom was Arthur Sackler. In his new book 'Empire Of Pain,' Patrick Radden Keefe tells the sweeping story of the rise and fall of an American dynasty, a family obsessed with emblazoning its name across museums and galleries all while largely obscuring any connection between its name and the drug that killed so many people. Well, the Sackler name is now forever entwined with the company Purdue Pharma, the creator of Ox圜ontin, the drug that helped steer the country into an opioid epidemic that has killed almost half a million people the last two decades. Isaac Sackler once told his three boys, what I have given you is the most important thing a father can give - a good name.

Empire of pain the secret history of the sackler dynasty