Library:Empire of Pain
| Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty | |
|---|---|
| Author | Patrick Radden Keefe |
| First published | 2021 |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-54568-6 unverified |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Business, Finance & Scams Health & Medicine |
| Tactics | Propaganda Technique Fraud or Scam |
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty is a 2021 book by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Summary
Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at The New Yorker, tells the story of three generations of the Sackler family, whose company, Purdue Pharma, made the opioid painkiller OxyContin. The family became famous for philanthropy, with their name on museum wings and university buildings around the world, while OxyContin's aggressive marketing helped fuel the opioid epidemic in the United States. The book won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Arthur Sackler
Keefe begins with Arthur Sackler, a psychiatrist and pioneer of pharmaceutical advertising, who in the 1960s helped market the tranquilizer Valium with campaigns that emphasized its benefits and minimized concerns about dependence. Keefe argues that Arthur's methods, including cultivating doctors and blurring the line between medical education and promotion, shaped the industry.
OxyContin
Arthur's brothers, Mortimer and Raymond, controlled Purdue Pharma, which launched OxyContin in 1996. Purdue promoted the drug heavily to doctors, claiming its extended-release formula made it less prone to abuse and that the risk of addiction was very low, a claim based on misreading a brief 1980 letter to a medical journal. Sales representatives were rewarded for persuading doctors to prescribe higher doses. As addiction and overdose deaths rose, the company pleaded guilty to federal charges of misbranding OxyContin in 2007 and again pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2020.
Accountability
Keefe documents how family members withdrew billions of dollars from Purdue as lawsuits mounted, and how Purdue's 2019 bankruptcy plan sought to shield the family from future lawsuits. In 2024 the US Supreme Court rejected that plan; a revised settlement followed in 2025. Activists, led by the photographer Nan Goldin, campaigned successfully for museums including the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim to remove the Sackler name. The Sacklers have denied wrongdoing.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
Empire of Pain shows how marketing, selective use of evidence and philanthropy can be combined to sell a dangerous product and protect a reputation. It is a detailed case study of how misleading claims about safety can cause enormous harm.
Related entries
- OxyContin carries a low risk of addiction
- There is no proof that smoking causes cancer
- Bad Pharma (Goldacre)
- Doubt Is Their Product (Michaels)