How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#51

Post by selectodude » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #41

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People with that kind of money can pay to scrub the internet. I'm sorry but this is so naive. Maybe true if you've got a bit of money and a little bit of notoriety, but I don't think that it would be possible to dissociate the Sacklers' name from the opioid crisis anytime soon.

Wait a few years, let them put their names on some charitable foundations and giving away a small or large percentage of their gains and they will have stellar reputations. Worked for Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, Michael Milken and many others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/arts/design/met-museum-sa...

The Sacklers have been donating huge sums to put their name on things for a long time.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#52

Post by chopin » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #38

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People with that kind of money can pay to scrub the internet. I'm sorry but this is so naive. Maybe true if you've got a bit of money and a little bit of notoriety, but I don't think that it would be possible to dissociate the Sacklers' name from the opioid crisis anytime soon.

> I don't think that it would be possible to dissociate the Sacklers' name from the opioid crisis anytime soon Attention is short. I wouldn't rule it out; pr goes a long way. Spend a couple million on a completely unrelated but well regarded cause of charity and folks who don't have skin in the opioid-game won't associate them for the bad they did (but for their most recent memories). What will keep the association a…

I dare to say that I'll never donate for a charity which takes money from the Sacklers. I will remember the name for the rest of my life.

I think this is too big to be easily cleaned up.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#53

Post by autisticcurio » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

cultus wrote: post #32

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we had a justice system, that $10.8 billion would be recoverable We’re in the midst of a series of lawsuits and criminal probes seeking to do exactly that. When public pressure rushes prosecutors, we get nonsense like Arizona getting rejected for original jurisdiction by SCOTUS. We have due process. Not mob rule.

Much of the money is diffucult to recover by being tied up in byzantine arrangements of LLCs and overseas accounts. That's generally how the rich avoid paying taxes as well. We have due process for the privileged. Tell all of the poor defendants who have been held in Rikers for over a year without a trial that they have due process.

[flagged]

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#54

Post by LanceH » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #20

songshu wrote: post #13

I never understand why doctors are not blamed for prescribing these. Are doctors not supposed to be responsible for prescriptions? If they are not, should we stop allowing them to prescribe? Why don’t doctors unions throw out members who would claim to have been hoodwinked by pharmaceutical companies?

Why blame doctors when the makers of OxyContin told Congress for years that it was safe and non-addictive. It's a systemic issue with various actors/stakeholders whom all are partially to blame in various capacities.

Congress chooses which experts it listens to. Too often it chooses those "experts" based on notoriety and the conclusion they hope to reach.

Now they are "shocked" to find out they people they've been accepting money from were leading them astray -- not that they knew where that money was ever coming from.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#55

Post by MRantiHATE » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

shrubble wrote: post #9

wombatmobile wrote: post #2

If we had a justice system, that $10.8 billion would be recoverable, and used to try to rehabilitate the victims. But we don't have a justice system. We have a legal system, and a financial system.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. Frédéric Bastiat

Are you referring to the fact that the Sackler family is all Jewish? Please cool it with the anti-semitism.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#56

Post by gruez » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #40

naringas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a couple ways this would play out in china 1. nobody ever hears nor finds out anything because it's all kept within the party. 2. they are publically shamed and they are sent to a re-education camp never to be seen or heard again. my 2 cents...

Where would you likely get away with this crime? In a system where you must strike a deal with a party that must maintain loyalty to ideological principles most violated by your crime? Or in a system like ours, where you must strike a deal with some prosecutors? The chief concerns of these prosecutors is so often their conviction rates, public optics, and personal careers. The political structure in the west encourag…

>If you can exploit millions to make billions then you can settle in the event of criminal persecution, hire a pr firm to take care of public optics, and donate generously to parties in power to ensure that the pesky prosecutor/attorney-general is sufficiently motivated not to attempt to make an example out of you.

In this case it doesn't look like they even bothered hiring a PR firm (or they're doing a piss poor job), and they seem to be getting off "fine".

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#57

Post by quickthrowman » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

songshu wrote: post #13

I never understand why doctors are not blamed for prescribing these. Are doctors not supposed to be responsible for prescriptions? If they are not, should we stop allowing them to prescribe? Why don’t doctors unions throw out members who would claim to have been hoodwinked by pharmaceutical companies?

Because medical boards are staffed with doctors who let other doctors off the hook. Doctors are held to account about as well as police (in the US), i.e. not at all.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#58

Post by songshu » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

treefish wrote: post #45

songshu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are supposed to have learned about it in medical school. If not, that's fine, maybe doctors shouldn't be allowed to prescribe and maybe only pharmacists should be allowed. My point is that it's a very valuable professional quality and we should put the responsibility where the quality is.

Doctors who were prescribing medicine at the time that OxyContin hit the market were not in medical school, they had graduated already. If pharma lies about safety there is no way for a doctor to know unless they conduct their own study, which would require lots of extra time and massive funding. Pharmacists didn't know that the safety data was fudged either. Everyone got their oxycontin from a pharmacist after a doc…

Sorry, I meant that they should have learned about drug safety in medical school, not that they should have learned about this specific drug.

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#59

Post by save_ferris » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #18

save_ferris wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but this is so naive. They were billionaires yesterday and they’re going to be billionaires tomorrow. Their reputation is going to be fine because we live in a society that absolutely worships money and those who have it. People with that kind of money can pay to scrub the internet.

Everyone likes money, but that doesn't mean they respect those who have it. Do you think more highly of the oil countries that have bought a football club? In a way it's kinda satisfying that the price of respectability is so high; nobody thinks the gulf states are any better than before they decided to pay a bunch of young men exorbitant wages to kick a ball around.

> Do you think more highly of the oil countries that have bought a football club?

No, but I don’t see how that deters them from misbehaving. How many billionaire oil or pharma magnates just wish they had a little more respectability? You think they care at all what people think about them? If they did, they wouldn’t have done what made them their blood money in the first place.

The Sacklers enabled the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and yet which did they choose to protect: their money or their reputation?

Re: How the Sacklers shifted $10.8B of an opioid fortune built on OxyContin

#60

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #27

thefounder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Why don’t doctors unions throw out members who would claim to have been hoodwinked by pharmaceutical companies? Because of the...money? There is/was plenty for everyone.

Do doctors get paid more for prescribing one brand of medication vs another?

I think there are rules against payment but as we all know, there are ways around rules when it concerns money. Looks like there is a correlation between doctors being buttered up, and them prescribing opiods.

https://lowninstitute.org/industry-payments-to-doctors-opioi...