Purdue Pharma Seeks a Secret Plan to Become an "End-to-End Pain Care Provider", According to Trial



[ad_1]

The complaint says that the company and its owners, the Sackler family, whose name adorn some of the country's most prestigious cultural institutions, have embarked on a decade of deception to push their pharmaceuticals, including the painkiller OxyContin, to doctors and patients. , publicly denying that internal documents prove that they know privately: highly addictive drugs were at the origin of overdoses and deaths.

Purdue was considering selling overdose antidotes, including Narcan, as "complementary" products to the same doctors for whom it was intended. opioids, the litigation claimed, and although the company kept a record of doctors suspected of inappropriate opioid prescriptions and other forms of violence, dubbed "Zero Region", it continued to collect income from these doctors .

includes a table of benefits that the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, which initiated the lawsuit, indicates that the Sacklers paid more than $ 4 billion in profit opioi between April 2008 and 2018.

Amended complaint containing redacted parts was filed in January by the Attorney General 's Office and a Massachusetts court judge decided this week to release an unredacted version by Friday. The trial is named after Purdue, eight members of the Sackler family and nine other people currently or formerly associated with the company as defendants.

"For many years, Purdue, his leaders, and members of the Sackler family have tried to overturn the responsibility and hide their role in creating the opioid epidemic," said Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, at the conclusion of the judge's decision. His office did not comment on Thursday.

Opioids, a class of pharmaceuticals including prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, morphine, and fentanyl, as well as illicit drugs such as heroin, are at the origin of a public health crisis in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 47,600 deaths related to opioid-related drugs have been reported in the United States, more than the number of deaths related to breast cancer.

  Why were anti-opioid protesters legendary? New York art space with vials of pills

A Purdue spokesman, Bob Josephson , said Thursday that the release of the unedited complaint was part We are continuing our efforts to isolate Purdue, blame him for the whole opioid crisis and judge the case in the court of public opinion rather than in front of the judicial system. "

" Massachusetts seeks to publicly defame Purdue, its leaders, employees, and administrators, while unfairly undermining the important work that we have undertaken to address the opioid addiction crisis by removing dozens of contextual fragments. millions of documents and distorting their meaning blatantly. with manifestly inaccurate allegations. "

The unredacted complaint also indicates that the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm played a crucial role in advising the company on how to promote its product to physicians and increase its profits. At this point, the company's sales staff told the Sacklers that the new sales tactics would generate between $ 200 million and $ 400 million in additional sales of OxyContin, according to an estimate provided by McKinsey, according to the complaint.

" McKinsey told Purdue about the possibilities of increasing prescriptions by convincing doctors that opioids provide "freedom," "peace of mind," and give patients "the best possible chance of leading a life." active and full ", according to the trial.

"McKinsey also suggested to sales drivers that they rely on the idea that opioids reduce stress and make patients more optimistic and less isolated," the trial says. "In fact, becoming opioid-dependent makes patients more stressed, more isolated and less likely to survive."

McKinsey would also analyze whether sales representatives were targeting prescribers who "were most likely to consume more opioids," staff told the Sacklers, the complaint said. The Sacklers were informed that McKinsey would study the use of "incentive compensation to push reps to generate more prescriptions." During a 2013 sales quarter, Purdue's 634 representatives visited prescribers 177,773 times, including over 2,400 in Massachusetts.

  CNN Exclusive: The More Opioid Doctors Prescribe, the More They Earn

In One of the Reports Written by McKinsey , titled "Identifying Granular Growth Opportunities for OxyContin: First Update of the Board", the company urged the Sacklers to increase their representatives "annual quota of sales visits and focus on" savings cards at opioids ". The use of such cards increased the likelihood that patients would continue to use opioids for extended periods, which "was particularly dangerous for patients and particularly cost-effective for Purdue," the trial says.

With Purdue staff, general manager Craig Landau and McKinsey also developed a strategy on how to "counter emotional messages from mothers with teenagers who overdosed in OxyContin [sic] ] "using messages from patients who advocated controlled-release drugs.

"As Landau knew at any given time, controlled-release, controlled-release, or sustained-release opioids do not control pain better than immediate-release, low-dose opioids." Place patients to OxyContin high dose was a key part of Purdue's misleading marketing strategy, "says the complainant.

A spokesman McKinsey said Thursday, "We are deeply concerned about the opioid crisis and its impact on our communities, we have just received the unredacted complaint, working on its nearly 300 pages." [19659007] History of opioids: From the ” drogue miracle “. abuser d'une épidémie ” data-src-mini=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-small-169.jpg” data-src-xsmall=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-medium-plus-169.jpg” data-src-small=”http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-large-169.jpg” data-src-medium=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-exlarge-169.jpg” data-src-large=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-super-169.jpg” data-src-full16x9=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-full-169.jpg” data-src-mini1x1=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160401170746-oxycodone-frontiers-small-11.jpg” data-demand-load=”not-loaded” data-eq-pts=”mini: 0, xsmall: 221, small: 308, medium: 461, large: 781″ src=”data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7″/>

Other parts of recently extracted documents show that the Sackler and other board members have urged Purdue staff to pursue tactics aimed at influencing doctors that Company considered as "key opinion leaders", which could encourage other doctors to prescribe larger amounts

Even with redactions, the complaint alleged that the Sacklers and other leaders were at the origin of Purdue. decision to deceive doctors and patients. "In 1997, Richard Sackler, Kathe Sackler, and other Purdue officials determined – and recorded in secret internal correspondence – that the doctors had the crucial misconception that OxyContin was weaker than morphine, making them had led to much more frequent prescription of OxyContin, even a substitute for Tylenol. "

The lawsuit describes Purdue's former president and president, Richard Sackler, as a micromanager constantly seeking to increase profits even though the opioid crisis was well advanced Sackler sometimes went to doctors' offices with representatives to increase sales, according to information gathered by the courts, and would have sought aggressive and positive publicity, even though Purdue executives were worried about the way he was promoting the drug. [19659002] In 2001 According to the lawsuit, Sackler revealed in a confidential email "his solution to the overwhelming evidence of overdose and death: blaming and stigmatizing people who become opioid-dependent."

"We must hit the attackers of all possible ways, "he wrote, according to the lawsuit." These are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals. "

The Sackler family, estimated by Forbes at about $ 13 billion, is renowned for its philanthropy around the world.The family name appears in several museums and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of New York Art, the Sackler Museum in Beijing, and the Royal Academy in London

Melanie Schuman and Linh Tran of CNN contributed to this report.

[ad_2]
Source link