In the early nineteen-fifties, they’d bought a small company that Mortimer and Raymond, who purchased Arthur’s stake after he died, turned into the giant Purdue Pharma. Three brothers, Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler, all of them both doctors and businessmen, had amassed a fortune in pharmaceuticals. But my colleague Patrick Radden Keefe was about to publish a piece in this magazine, called “ Empire of Pain,” detailing the history of the Sacklers’ fortune. Until then, the family had been known for its philanthropy in art, academia, and medicine. But he was stubborn and ambitious, and I believed in him, and he knew I did, and I knew how much that mattered.įor the Sackler family, October, 2017, was stressful. He had spent the first couple of years of life, before I adopted him, in a Russian hospital, and the effects of developmental and emotional deprivation he had suffered still haunted him. My oldest son had recently started college, and I felt even more than the normal amount of parental pride and wonder at watching him find his feet. I got nominated for a big award and became a staff writer at The New Yorker. October, 2017, was a pretty good month for my family.
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