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A review by edgwareviabank
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Empire of Pain is every bit as well written, gripping, and infuriating as I'd been promised. I came to it through a recommendation by someone who'd heard I enjoyed John Carreyrou's Bad Blood; they said this would be even better. So here I am, urging all enthusiastic Bad Blood readers who haven't yet read Empire of Pain to pick it up. I found both books just as compelling, and for similar reasons, though Empire of Pain is longer and broader in scope: equal parts family saga, journalistic exposé, and legal thriller.
Its narration begins at the start of the 20th century, when young Arthur Sackler established himself and paved the way for his younger brothers to join him in building the family empire. There's a lot of ground to cover about the origins of medical advertising, before opioids and OxyContin even enter the stage, and it's all fascinating stuff: I've always taken it for granted that the marketing of pharmaceuticals is as old as the practice of marketing itself, when it's in fact more recent, and almost completely a Sackler creation. The author sets the stage slowly and carefully for readers to understand all the factors at play in the boom of OxyContin prescriptions, and in the subsequent, decades-long opioid crisis in the US. As all the pieces come together, I kept asking myself, page in and page out, "how on earth did anyone allow them to do that?" (sometimes, it happened multiple times per page).
The answer is everything but surprising. A quote fairly early on in the narration states that, when it comes to pharmaceutical controversies, history repeats itself. Empire of Pain shows just how true that is, in every aspect: unchecked medical claims, pharma companies dictating their agenda to regulators, corruption, and much more.
Aside from everything I've learned about the topics at the heart of the story, my takeaway is that I must read all the other books Patrick Radden Keefe has written (I got a headstart with Rogues earlier this year, also highly recommended). I really appreciate his clarity, and how at ease I felt, as a reader, seeing that a subject matter I worried I'd find obscure was presented in a very accessible way.
Its narration begins at the start of the 20th century, when young Arthur Sackler established himself and paved the way for his younger brothers to join him in building the family empire. There's a lot of ground to cover about the origins of medical advertising, before opioids and OxyContin even enter the stage, and it's all fascinating stuff: I've always taken it for granted that the marketing of pharmaceuticals is as old as the practice of marketing itself, when it's in fact more recent, and almost completely a Sackler creation. The author sets the stage slowly and carefully for readers to understand all the factors at play in the boom of OxyContin prescriptions, and in the subsequent, decades-long opioid crisis in the US. As all the pieces come together, I kept asking myself, page in and page out, "how on earth did anyone allow them to do that?" (sometimes, it happened multiple times per page).
The answer is everything but surprising. A quote fairly early on in the narration states that, when it comes to pharmaceutical controversies, history repeats itself. Empire of Pain shows just how true that is, in every aspect: unchecked medical claims, pharma companies dictating their agenda to regulators, corruption, and much more.
Aside from everything I've learned about the topics at the heart of the story, my takeaway is that I must read all the other books Patrick Radden Keefe has written (I got a headstart with Rogues earlier this year, also highly recommended). I really appreciate his clarity, and how at ease I felt, as a reader, seeing that a subject matter I worried I'd find obscure was presented in a very accessible way.