![]() The mass incarceration and abuse of people who are mentally ill over centuries? The infection of patients with hepatitis B and HIV? The deaths and suffering that result from 10% of all patients admitted to hospital suffering an adverse event and 1% dying? The torturing of the dying? The many unnecessary operations? The widespread overtreatment? Healthcare’s considerable contribution to ecological disaster and climate change? Ivan Illich would say the destruction of cultural mechanisms for responding to the suffering, pain, death, and grief that are part of being human, but the burgeoning epidemic of deaths from opioids must rank high. The half a million and still rising deaths from opioid overdoses in the US, together with increasing numbers in other countries, is surely medicine’s biggest failure. ![]() Richard Smith reviews Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty and concludes that the US opioid epidemic could not have happened without doctors and the whole medical establishment playing a part ![]()
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