7 ms·
The fact that the Sacklers are going to get to keep the billions harvested by ruining the lives of tens of millions of Americans bespeaks a morally bankrupt civ
by kevmo 6y ago
The fact that the Sacklers are going to get to keep the billions harvested by ruining the lives of tens of millions of Americans bespeaks a morally bankrupt civil society. The Sackler family literally belongs in prison. Instead, they're going to use their billions to control politicians and ruin countless more lives. The sanctioning of "white collar" criminality is a major component in the USA government's increasing loss of legitimacy.
- sneak 6y ago> The fact that the Sacklers are going to get to keep the billions harvested by ruining the lives of tens of millions of Americans bespeaks a morally bankrupt civil society. Selling opiate pills isn't the reason those lives were ruined, any more than selling gasoline is the reason that the climate is changing. Opiates must be put into a body and swallowed to do any harm, and the Sacklers didn't have any involvement whatsoever in that.
- bepvte 6y agoRead the linked new yorker article at the bottom of this one to see how they played a direct critical role in getting doctors to perscribe them for minor pain.
- sneak 6y agoA doctor prescribing them and someone ingesting them are different acts. One does not harm anyone, and is just writing on a piece of paper. The other is extremely dangerous.
- bepvte 6y agoWe generally trust doctors to give us medications and advice that help us, and ingest what they prescribe.
- sneak 6y agoThe fact remains that the ultimate responsibility for what goes into the body of a functioning adult who is not coerced in any way lies solely with that adult. We fault the individual when they don't take their medicine. Why do we fault their physician when they do? State licensing has confused the issue and made most people misplace the "authority" in this chain of events. Your doctor is NOT the authority on what goes into your body: you are.
- orf 6y agoThat’s a silly argument to make because it completely ignores reality. Sure: nobody forced those pills into their mouths. But when you go to the doctor and say “I have this issue, please help me” and the doctor says “take this and it will help you”, clearly that’s something. Especially if that thing will actually not help you in the long run, and a large company knew that. When you’re dealing with large numbers of people, instructed by an authority figure, who is in turn influenced by a third party, with an end result that lives are ruined, then corporate pandering in the form of “everyone had a choice!!” seems rather odd because it clearly doesn’t absolve the doctors or the third party of any responsibility.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm not tremendously concerned about absolving anyone. What I'm concerned about is a world where the many people who legitimately need pain medication won't be able to get it, because we've told doctors that prescribing pain meds to people in pain is unacceptable behavior.
- xoa 6y ago>The fact remains that the ultimate responsibility for what goes into the body of a functioning adult who is not coerced in any way lies solely with that adult. This is horseshit sneak. You know it's horseshit. You're on HN, you deal with tech all the time. Would you say that responsibility for any security flaws or leaks in software lies solely with the "functioning adult who is not coerced in any way to install it"? Individually we're humans, we have fixed brain size and thermodynamics and thus have hard absolute limits on the total amount of information we can ever know and much much tighter limits on the rate at which we can ingest new information, process it, or make decisions. It is impossible for a human brain to be in charge of everything in modern society. IMPOSSIBLE. There is not enough time in a day, not enough days in a lifetime, to learn more than the tiniest fraction of what all of us use constantly. We deal with that by massively externalizing onto other people/organizations and trust frameworks, and then working to ensure there can be enough confidence in those. So responsibility is absolutely a spectrum, in medicine, in tech, everywhere. We cannot verify it all ourselves. Something must involve external relationships, and those external relationships are themselves two way aren't they? In a relationship, BOTH sides have responsibilities. >We fault the individual when they don't take their medicine. Why do we fault their physician when they do? Um, because it's a two-way relationship? The patient's part of it is to seek external expertise, and then follow through on expert instructions. The medical expert's part of it is to faithfully give instructions that are wholly in the patient's best interests to the best of their knowledge and capability, without any self-interest beyond the remuneration the patient offers for said service. >Your doctor is NOT the authority on what goes into your body: you are. As vacuous as claiming car manufacturers are not the authority on what you drive or it should be fine for food/medicine/anything manufacturers to lie about what goes into their products because hey, your fault for not verifying it. No, that's not how any of this works.
- jessaustin 6y agoIf physicians aren't responsible for safely prescribing medication, why do we bother having them?
- VonGuard 6y ago"Dow Chemical is not responsible for Bhopal disaster that killed hundreds of thousands. They just released those chemicals into the air, you had to breath in order to be effected." If a doctor perscribes you heroin because he read a paid-for-report by the Sackler's goons, then yes, they are responsible. Not sure how you could blame a human for doing what their doctor tells them. Oxy is pure narcotic, and never should have been prescribed to anyone, but $$$$$ is a hell of a drug too.
- ncmncm 6y agoThe number I recall is 25,000. Notable is that nobody at Dow was arrested.
- Ardon 6y agoThey also spent a significant amount of money convincing doctors to use opiates, and creating misleading or false studies about their safety.
- bad_good_guy 6y agoPlease don't use such bad faith arguments, these kinds are points are meaningless to the point of absurdity.
- sneak 6y agoThese are my sincere beliefs. I don’t generally engage anyone in bad faith.
- CameronNemo 6y agoAh yes, the Sacklers were just selling opiates as paperweights and art pieces... they should not be responsible for people consuming them!
- devilduck 6y agoOh cool, the gun argument except with drugs. This is not wisdom, friend. It's willful ignorance.
- bootlooped 6y agoI think they both aggressively pushed the sale of Oxycontin, and advertised it to be used in a specific way, so that the outcome of those two things was very likely to cause addiction problems in a large number of patients. https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/