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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go through life with no conscience. I don't really want to be a sociopath but I admit that to be free from guilt or anxiety over my actions at even a level one tenth of this guy would be nice.

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Opioid pain drugs are life savers for people who actually need them, so I think this is a bit more complicated than capitalist Satan-incarnate vs. the poor helpless fools duped into taking his wicked drug.

I'm not denying that opioid drugs are useful, but the way Purdue Pharma actually acted is much more in line with a capitalist Satan-incarnate view, regardless of the benefits of opioids.

Yea, framing the discussion as “people believe pharmaceuticals acted amorally because the produce opioid medicines” is reframing the debate imo.

It is certainly more complicated, but that doesn't necessarily make the manufactures look better. From all accounts, they marketed their drug as non-addictive, in spite of evidence they had to the contrary. Now after getting people addicted to their safe medication, they've made a "cure" for it. Who's to say the cure isn't worse than the disease? I wouldn't trust them to make that judgement call. It isn't as if Oxycodone is the only way to manage pain either.

Not only the manufactures, but also the pharma sales reps who make commission.

Plenty of blame to go around.

Agreed, and at this point in time, those prescribing have a big share of the responsibility too.

OxyContin was largely a gimmick to market a drug that was long out of patent (Oxycodone was first synthesized in 1916):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/

The real gimmick? That it would be "non-addictive".

Purdue were aggressively pushing oxy to people who didn't need them though, and were describing it as non-addictive even though they knew it was addictive.

People always say "what about those who have pain at the 8, 9 or 10 end of the scale?" Well, the US could probably cut prescribing by 80% and leave those people still on the meds.

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