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"Unfolds with the velocity and verve of a Scorsese film…A tour de force."—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing
John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. It was the early 2000s, a boom time for painkillers, and he developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.
Kapoor, a brilliant immigrant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation. He gathered around him an ambitious group of young lieutenants. His head of sales—an unstable and unmanageable leader, but a genius of persuasion—built a team willing to pull every lever to close a sale, going so far as to recruit an exotic dancer ready to scrape her way up. They zeroed in on the eccentric and suspect doctors receptive to their methods. Employees at headquarters did their part by deceiving insurance companies. The drug was a niche product, approved only for cancer patients in dire condition, but the company’s leadership pushed it more widely, and together they turned Insys into a Wall Street sensation.
But several insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle. They sparked a sprawling investigation that would lead to a dramatic courtroom battle, breaking new ground in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.
In The Hard Sell, National Magazine Award–finalist Evan Hughes lays bare the pharma playbook. He draws on unprecedented access to insiders of the Insys saga, from top executives to foot soldiers, from the patients and staff of far-flung clinics to the Boston investigators who treated the case as a drug-trafficking conspiracy, flipping cooperators and closing in on the key players.
With colorful characters and true suspense, The Hard Sell offers a bracing look not just at Insys, but at how opioids are sold at the point they first enter the national bloodstream—in the doctor’s office.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 18, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593508305
- File size: 267242 KB
- Duration: 09:16:45
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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June 1, 2022
John Kapoor develops a powerful opioid pain medicine in response to his wife's agonizing cancer pain. His intentions are soon overtaken by capitalistic tendencies, and the company he founded becomes focused on profits at any cost. The team Kapoor recruits goes down the rabbit hole of unethical and illegal behavior to boost their paychecks and company profits. All in all, this is just another brick in the wall of the opioid crisis. It isn't hard to see the profit motive overtaking the goal of minimizing suffering. Narrator Mike Chamberlain does a great job of adding to the procedural quality of this corporate true crime story. He is adept at taking listeners through the facts with a compassionate but neutral, calm tone of an observer. VERDICT True crime fans will enjoy this expertly researched account of corporate malfeasance and mayhem committed by doctors.--Christa Van Herreweghe
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from November 22, 2021
Journalist Hughes (Literary Brooklyn) takes a revelatory deep dive into the ignominious history of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Insys Therapeutics, the leadership of which was convicted in 2019 of federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. John Kapoor, the founder of the Arizona company, and others had bribed doctors to prescribe their fentanyl-based pain medication Subsys even when medically unnecessary. Insys also persuaded physicians to delegate seeking prior authorizations for insurance coverage to an Insys contractor, a practice that Hughes notes is tantamount to a kickback (“If you write our product instead of the other one, we’ll pay for the grunt work”).Hughes does an excellent job of illuminating the inner workings of Big Pharma’s malicious practices; for example, it was routine practice for sales reps to document their pitches, and some of those notes referenced lies about the medications being pushed (such as OxyContin being less addictive than other opioids). To avoid legal jeopardy, several major drug manufacturers altered their record-keeping systems so as to eliminate the risk of an employee recording incriminating information. While the arc of this story won’t surprise readers familiar with the recent Purdue Pharma headlines, this is a powerful indictment of abhorrent industry practices. It’s a worthy complement to Gerald Posner’s Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office.
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