The part of the Sackler family behind the company Purdue Pharma have become notorious for their addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin which blighted innumerable American lives, while the Sacklers culturewashed the resulting colossal profits with conceited museum donations. There was hardly a museum in any first world capital city that didn’t salute their narcissism with a “Sackler wing” or a “Sackler courtyard”. Their story was first substantially told by the New Yorker’s investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in his book Empire of Pain.
Purdue’s creepy genius lay not in science, or pharmaceuticals, or medicine – but marketing. It wasn’t that they invented opioids; these had existed in various forms but had long been considered too dangerous for any but the most extreme pain management, or in terminal palliative care; Purdue simply persuaded the US medical profession to prescribe them in pill form for much less serious cases. Then the nation’s addiction agony was recycled into art-world prestige.
