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Bribing Doctors, Making Millions

Bribing Doctors, Making Millions

FromThe FRONTLINE Dispatch


Bribing Doctors, Making Millions

FromThe FRONTLINE Dispatch

ratings:
Length:
29 minutes
Released:
Jun 23, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

How a drug company made millions pushing an opioid painkiller up to 100x stronger than morphine, as many on Wall Street looked the other way. FRONTLINE filmmaker Tom Jennings and Financial Times reporter Hannah Kuchler discuss their new investigation of Insys Therapeutics — from a jaw-dropping interview with a former sales director who admits to bribing doctors to prescribe the highly addictive drug Subsys, to how Wall Street propelled Insys’ success even as questions emerged about its practices, to what role drug companies’ pursuit of profits hasplayed in the opioid crisis: “I think that it's really interesting just how people are able to disconnect their actions from the consequences, especially in business,” Kuchler says.

With federal prosecutors using laws designed to catch mob bosses, Insys would ultimately become the first pharmaceutical company to have its top executives sentenced to prison time in connection with the opioid epidemic. For more on Insys’ spectacular rise and fall — and its consequences — watch the documentary Opioids, Inc. from FRONTLINE and the FT, and read our in-depth joint reporting — also available at  ft.com/insys.

Correction: An earlier version of this description misstated the strength of Insys’s painkiller.
Released:
Jun 23, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

An award-winning, original, investigative series made by the team behind the acclaimed PBS documentary show, FRONTLINE. From the long and deadly arm of 9/11, to a police shooting in West Virginia with a startling twist, to what life is really like for children living in a Kenyan refugee camp, each episode follows a different reporter through an investigation that sometimes is years in the making. The FRONTLINE Dispatch – because some stories are meant to be heard. Produced at FRONTLINE’s headquarters at WGBH in Boston and powered by PRX. The FRONTLINE Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation Journalism Initiative.