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posted by martyb on Friday November 22 2019, @08:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-it's-non-addicting,-give-it-to-every-exec-for-a-month dept.

Report: Sacklers using fake doctors, false marketing to sell OxyContin in China

The mega-rich family behind the OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma is back to selling its highly addictive pain-killer with underhanded tactics and deceptive advertising—this time in China, via its international company, Mundipharma. That’s all according to a searing new investigation by the Associated Press.

The Sackler family, which owns both Purdue and Mundipharma, is embroiled in litigation in the United States over its alleged role in sparking the country’s epidemic of opioid abuse and overdoses. Thousands of plaintiffs—many state and local governments—claim that Purdue and the Sacklers misled patients, doctors, and regulators on the addictiveness of their drugs, aggressively marketed them, and wooed doctors into over-prescribing them.

While Purdue has since declared bankruptcy and stopped promoting OxyContin in the US, the Sacklers seem to be employing the same practices in China.

Based on documents and interviews with multiple Mundipharma representatives in China, the AP investigation found that reps were at times posing as doctors, providing debunked information that its long-acting opioids are safe and less addictive, and even illegally copying private medical records of patients to inform sales tactics.

[...]Mundipharma, meanwhile, is still hiring in China.

The AP story linked above is in-depth and well worth reading. See also: HuffPost.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 22 2019, @04:12PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday November 22 2019, @04:12PM (#923424) Journal

    Lots of wealth really warps people. It's the rich, anti-social sorts like these Sacklers who are really ruining America, while too many of us stand idly by and let them. Worse, some among us venerate them, solely because they're rich. Doesn't matter that they're awful, the thinking is that if they have money, they must have done something right. That thinking is straight out of the Prosperity Gospel. That they have acquired their wealth by doing wrong to a lot of someones somehow doesn't get mentioned, especially when they bribe the media and the law to look the other way. They have to sink to Epstein levels of depravity to break that illusionary connection between wealth and virtue.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   5