Description
In the early 2000s, John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics.
A boom time for painkillers, he had developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.
Kapoor, a brilliant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation.
But there was a problem: the drug was approved only for cancer patients in dire condition.
So he recruited an avaricious team, who employed a variety of deceptive techniques, from falsifying patient records to deceiving insurance companies.
Insys became a Wall Street sensation.
That is, until insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle, sparking a sprawling investigation in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.
Evan Hughes 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…
‘A pacey crime caper set against the backdrop of the opioid crisis…when I tell you that reading The Hard Sell is like watching a Scorsese film, you will assume I am exaggerating. Pick it up and tell me I’m wrong’ – Patrick Radden Keefe, The New York Times
