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Billionaire Insys founder charged in U.S. opioid bribe case
- kolbe 9y agoAt least one step in the right direction. But we're still pretty far from reaching some parity with the idea that it's often a life sentence to be driving in a car with someone who commits a murder if you're poor and black, but it's some soft white collar club fed crime to get thousands addicted to your drug, take their money, ruin their families for years and eventually take their lives.
- model_m_warrior 9y agoThis guy works in HR.
- throwaway0255 9y agoI can choose not to buy and take opiates. I can't choose to not be murdered. Murderers are much worse, and prisons better serve their purpose when they're used for murderers and their accomplices than when they're used for white collar crime.
- QAPereo 9y agoSpoken like someone who’s never had major surgery or trauma.
- chk_ur_autism 9y agoThe ignorance of this comment is absolutely astounding. (not yours, the parent!)
- tuxxy 9y agoExactly. I know some pretty tough guys. One of which took a gunshot wound and barely needed any recovery time. This same guy got in a car accident that ruined his back. After some surgery, he tried to not use opioid pain killers, but he described it as maddening. It's not the pain that brings you issues, it's the constant dull, aching pains that give your life grief. He started taking prescribed opioids for it. When it came time to ween off of them, he said it was like looking into a void where he had two exceptionally clear choices: continue using opioids, or struggle to get off of them. He picked the latter and is opioid free for a few years now. He said it was the hardest thing he's ever done. He's just happy to say that he doesn't need them anymore.
- datawarrior 9y agoWhen I was 19 I messed my back up very badly on the job. The company tried very hard not to take responsibility for it, going so far as court with dueling doctors. The fact I refused opiods for my pain was used against me, "If it's so bad why aren't you taking the pain medications?" My lawyer told me that if I had taken them I likely would have gotten 50% more int he settlement. I don't regret it though. Addiction is a major problem in my family.
- jdhawk 9y agoSo always get the script, then flush them?
- tomjakubowski 9y agoA strategy defeated by a single question under oath: “And were you taking the drugs as prescribed?”
- QAPereo 9y agoI think that future generations may look at how we were forced to deal with pain in much the way we look at pre-anesthesia surgery.
- specialist 9y agoBack pain is somehow more personal, emotional. For me, it’s much harder to ignore, suffer.
- perfmode 9y agoEh. The scale is not really comparable. People who create systemic problems that are difficult to fix pose a much greater threat to society than people who murder individuals. I'm not saying to go easy on murderers. The opposite: I'm saying that we should take the former even more seriously. Fentanyl is an incredibly potent and addictive drug.
- notyourwork 9y agoI don't understand why this needed to be on a throwaway account?
- grzm 9y agoThe account you're responding to is over 3 months old, which, while not as old as some, doesn't appear to have been created purely for this conversation. There are quite a few members on HN whose accounts appear to have originally been created as a throwaway that have gone on to use it as their main account. Let's err on the side of giving them the benefit of the doubt.
- notyourwork 9y agoFair point - I didn't check age.
- kolbe 9y agoIt's not a great societal practice that we demand everyone be smart enough to defy medical decree in order to remain safe. I know you 140 IQ antisocial introverts always want to structure society as a kleptocracy for the intelligent, but that would be a shit place to live.
- nkrisc 9y agoWhite collar crime can do far much more societal damage than a single murderer can. I don't see any reason they both can't share prison.
- mikeash 9y agoChoice is irrelevant unless it’s an informed choice. It’s impossible to make an informed choice when people keep the information from you. These people are responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths. It’s a little less direct than shooting someone in the face, but it should still be considered mass murder.
- Pica_soO 9y agoWould you like this new kind of aspirin? Its totally worry-free as several neutral studies will tell you? Its relative cheap and has a cool name- PuffThePinkDragon.
- mustacheemperor 9y agoA major part of this scandal is the fact that Insys' bribery led me patients to be misled in their choice, by the doctors they trusted for expert advice.
- ryuker16 9y agoIn this case doctors were pushing drugs on patients....for some folks, you can't choose not to be addicted after taking it for a length of time.
- watty 9y agoLet's keep comments relative please. Systemic racism is a problem but has nothing to do with Insys.
- kolbe 9y agoShould I choose some other crime to compare it to? Ok, how about the fact that possessing this guy's drug without a prescription would land a white guy in jail faster than Kapoor's going to get there for peddling it to hundreds of thousands of people? You don't need to get hung up on the crime that I'm juxtaposing it with. Just notice the gulf between some types of justice and others.
- kbenson 9y agoA case is being made regarding relative punishments. I find this is an entirely appropriate time and location to bring this argument, given that the main criteria for comments is that they are substantive and contribute. I think this one contributes by starting an interesting side conversation, which are in my opinion one of the best parts of HN. If you don't want to take part, just click the [-] to collapse the thread and ignore it. If you take issue with the actual content of the comment, a bit more information on why you think it has nothing to do with a case where a high placed executive might face relatively minor punishment for, as the GP puts it, getting "thousands addicted to your drug, take their money, ruin their families for years and eventually take their lives." might help clarify that stance.
- jameskegel 9y agoThere are so many new faces in this thread and they all want to refocus the conversation on other hot button topics. Why is this?
- BatFastard 9y agoI wish we had Mueller on this case.
- 20170319 9y agoThe cynic in me thinks Kapoor was "sacrificed" to shield the Sacklers. Sort of like how Rajaratnam was "sacrificed" to shield the large banks.
- crshstsh 9y agoco-sign!
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- amsilprotag 9y agoFor those unfamiliar, or who want to explore the idea that Kapoor simply didn't bribe conspicuously enough, see [0]. And although it is true that so-called "deaths of despair" are all increasing[1], the trend-lines for opiates look especially distressing[2]. [0] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-oxycontin/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-famil... [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078 http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078 [2] https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...
- tryingagainbro 9y ago...as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine ...In the US Fentanyl caused 20,100 deaths in 2016, a rise of 540% over the past 3 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl Put him in the cell next to El Chappo IMO. If the government digs they will find something and they have plenty of tools for informers. You cannot manage a billion dollar corporation with thousands of employees by whispering while walking like John Gotti. There's trail...
- couchdive 9y agoyeah and the entire FDA group that allowed this and maybe the pain center doctors who ran pill mills all over the midwest and south? Nah, they are all rich, easier to find a scapegoat, pretend your doing something, and gloat. The life of politics. Maybe declare a war on drugs!
- adventured 9y agoDon't forget the Congress and President that enabled it through legislation. > Maybe declare a war on drugs! Declare a national public health emergency. That'll surely make a dent. "Trump declares opioid epidemic a national public health emergency" http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/donald-trump-opioid-epidemic/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/donald-trump-opioid-e...
- gozur88 9y agoI don't know if it's true in this case, but there are a lot of things for which an official declaration of emergency allows you to tap funds that wouldn't otherwise be available.
- modoc 9y agoA couple random things: 1) I broke my leg quite badly, and after morphine and dilaudid didn't help they put me on fentanyl, which at the dosage they gave me, just barely helped with the pain. I am VERY glad they had that in their arsenal. 2) My understanding is that most Fentanyl deaths are due to heroin being cut with fentanyl (or even replaced with) on the street market and addicts don't know the potency of what they get, and OD. That fentanyl is coming illegally usually from China (either directly or via Mexico, etc..) and is isn't directly the fault of Pharma. If you want to solve that problem you need to either stabilize heroin potency or make it easy to test, etc... also making Narcan cheaply/freely available would save a lot of lives.
- joering2 9y agoHe should stop pledging not guilty because he really may see 20 years behind. Even his wife pledged against him: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4087622-insys-guilty-pleas-get-closer-former-ceo https://seekingalpha.com/article/4087622-insys-guilty-pleas-...
- icantdrive55 9y agoWhy do I feel like in a few months, cancer patients will have a hard time obtaining opioids? (I saw my father die a horrid prolonged painful death due to underprescribing of opioids. I think about the pain he went through daily.) I don't know what exactly this company did, but incentives have been around the pharmaceutical industry forever. And no--you're not susposd to give a doctor money to remember your drug when writing that script. My point is there are people who are successfully taking opioids. (They have good studies proving that people can successfully take opioids without having to constinstly up the dose. The one I recall reading was was done using residents of nursing homes.) I don't want to live in a society that doesn't treat pain. Trump just allocated a few bucks to fund a drug that 'takes the pain away, without any risk of addiction.' Good luck! Let's find the pill they have been searching for forever. Personally, I would like to see bupenorpine provided for free to addicts. They have a generic form that's reasonable. Since we have a "National Emergency"; why do I have a feeling we could get the price lower? If they(addicts--I guess?) abuse the gift, they are cut off. I am so tired of politicians getting into medicine.
- thinkloop 9y agoThe most addictive substance on the planet, and still have to make bribes, strange.
- khana 9y agoGrill that bitch.
- PrgsvThgt 9y agoDoes anyone struggle with the fact that 1) people who are very sick or injured need pain control and 2) the only tool in a doctor's bag is an opoid and 3) we are somehow going after the people that produce the opoids that patients need, to live a less-painful life? Far more people die annually of alcohol related illnesses, than do opoid overdoses. This is the "crisis" is not a crisis at all. In fact, if you review the CDC's numbers, the rate of increase in opoid related deaths and the total number, relative to other more significant causes of death, are unremarkable. [link] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm By the numbers, we should be tripling and quadrupling the amount of money for mental health treatment to reduce suicide and alcohol dependency. Please, before you vote down or troll me, review the numbers yourself. The numbers speak for themselves [link]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#019 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#019
- ejnulls 9y agoNo, because there are many other treatments for pain. The best one is often physical therapy and other repeated physical treatments (especially for back pain), but these are more expensive than a pill! Additionally, there are other alternatives that people like this billionaire have vested interests in keeping illegal. Such as marijuana, there has been some decent evidence that it can be used to replace opiates as a pain treatment for some people (and has waaaay less side effects). I don't even work in healthcare, so I imagine there are a ton of options I am overlooking.
- vesrah 9y agoI think you should look into Insys before you use them to take a stance like this.
- colordrops 9y agoYou changed the subject to alcohol though. No one said alcohol wasn't a problem or that opioids have no use. We might as well start talking about first addressing everyone killed in car accidents or unjust wars.
- 9y ago
- revmoo 9y agoThese guys are snakes. They also used shareholder money to lobby against marijuana legalization because they knew it would impact their bottom line.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]