American overdose : the opioid tragedy in three acts / Chris McGreal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGreal, Chris, author.

Contributor:

EBSCOhost.

Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opioid abuse--United States--History.

Opioid abuse.

Chronic pain--Treatment--United States.

Chronic pain.

Drug abuse--United States.

Drug abuse.

Chronic pain--Treatment.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : PublicAffairs, 2018.

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [2018]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic--devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it. The starting point for McGreal's deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of "drug dealers in white coats." A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry's coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers--resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.

Contents:

Introduction: An Epidemic Foretold

ACT I DEALING

The Undertaker

Junk Science

Pilliamson

The Sales Pitch

What They Knew;

Investigation

Vital Sign

ACT II HOOKED

A Loaded Gun in the Suicide Ward

Paying to Play

Pursuit

The Silence

Pushback

Sounding the Alarm

Kermit

A Free Pass

The End of Days

ACT III WITHDRAWAL

The Public Health

Russian Roulette

Dodging Torpedoes

The National Nightmare

Guilt.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ipswich, MA Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on December 31, 2018).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

Other Format:

Print version: McGreal, Chris. American overdose.

ISBN:

9781541773769

1541773764

Publisher Number:

99986443936

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.