New Year, New Hope?
The court rulings go back and forth.
Guilty now may be over turned later.
The latest case, so massive there were no courtrooms large enough, dwindled from two dozen defendants to a mere handful as, in turn, they each decided against facing a jury and paid settlements to jump the sinking ship like rats, leaving a few to chance their arms, in a game of who will blink first, a game of ‘what can we get away with’.
Teva goes down in NY today, but was absolved in CA last month, and it will appeal.
This trial was filed years ago and took 4 seasons to complete and who knows if the rulings will stand?
I have lost track of where things stand in the ‘groundbreaking’ Oklahoma 2019 Johnson & Johnson ruling. Ruled against, overturned… where are we now? Johnson & Johnson were amongst the late-exit rats yesterday.
The Sackler Purdue OxyContin bankruptcy rulings were overturned almost as soon as they were made ... leaving some of us delighted, because of the protections it wrongly afforded the Sacklers and some of us infuriated, because of the payment delays …..and where will those rulings stand this time next year?
So many other cases are in the pipe line watching the outcomes eagerly, searching for clues to success, as this legal tango goes back and forth.
Will those listed in the settlements ever get their money?
Will the money ever get to those it may help?
Will it help?
Will justice ever be served?
Can justice ever be fiscal?
Is that just buying a pardon?
Is it just vengeance we seek?
The suggestion that we are looking for someone to blame for the death of our children is trite and over simplistic. It infuriates me and it is never uttered by anyone who knows this pain.
With all that we’ve seen,
With all that is demonstrable,
With all that we know about the advertising and social control,
With all that we know about the capture of regulatory bodies,
With all that we know about the mechanism to capture the doctors…
I KNOW that the Sacklers and did not actually force OxyContin into my Luke’s mouth.
But, what we do know is that the Sacklers led the charge, wrote the play book and changed the ‘science’ surrounding opioid use. Many followed and the FDA abetted.
”You can’t get addicted if you are in legitimate pain”
”What we thought we knew about opioids, was wrong”
“Follow the science”
”Doctor knows best”
”Richard Sackler is a doctor”
..and so, because of that indoctrination backed by threats from a captured American Medical Association warning that under-medicating pain can result in loss of a license………
the ER doctor that gave Luke, 2 years into recovery, a course of opioids for liver damage from a skiing accident, likely thought, and assured Luke that … it would not be a problem.
And that Doctor was wrong.
And Purdue knew they were wrong.
So, going into 2022 what resolution do I wish for in all these law suits?
I stand where I always have.
I wish for the mechanism that allowed the capture of every agency that should deliver human safety above profit and political gain, but did not,
that should serve the population it purports to protect and not themselves or the pharmaceutical industry, but did not...
TO BE PURGED! NOW!
Not to punish (though I do have my own fantasies about that),
but to burn the playbook,
so that this behavior may cease instantly and put the fear of that purge so deep into the psyche of this country and any other, that it will never ever happen again, anywhere, ever.
Decades, hours of court transcripts, years of DOJ and DEA investigations, millions of billable lawyer hours, billions of dollars in promised, ordered and contested settlements and hundreds of thousands of people dead …
and there’s no sign of that! .. Not a whiff!
The FDA officials, the mechanism of the revolving door between Big Pharma, Government, FDA and the justice system, blurs all the lines and the same players are still on the board.
Let’s see what 2022 brings.