In "Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty," Boston native Patrick Radden Keefe exposes how the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma made money off selling the addictive painkiller OxyContin despite knowing the medical risks to patients.
As opioid addictions, overdoses and deaths swept the country, the company continued to push opioid pain prescriptions. Here in Massachusetts, Attorney General Maura Healey has been mounting legal battles against the company. Keefe joined Jim Braude to discuss.
“Part of what I was trying to do in the book was not just tell the OxyContin story, but go back and look at multiple generations of this family,” Keefe said. “And what’s fascinating, dating back to the early days, they made their first big fortune marketing Valium in the 1960s. And dating back to the 1950s, 1960s, there was this tendency in this family to do philanthropic giving where you see your name on universities and art museums, but to always obscure the source of the family wealth.”
WATCH: Author Patrick Radden Keefe on the Sackler family
