American Overdose

'A riveting and urgent reckoning of colossal corruption.' - Philip Gourevitch One hundred and fifty Americans are killed each day by the opioid epidemic, described by a former head of the Food and Drug Administration as 'one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine'. But as Chris McGreal reveals in American Overdose , it was an avoidable tragedy driven by bad science, corporate greed and a corrupted medical system. In a narrative brimming with the guilty, the victims and the unlikely heroes, Chris McGreal travels from West Virginia 'pill mills' to the corridors of Washington DC as he unravels the story of Big Pharma's hijacking of American healthcare and politics to push mass prescribing of 'heroin in a pill'. He meets the police and FBI agents who struggled to get prosecutors to go after doctors they called 'drug dealers in white coats'; the families devastated by painkillers they thought would heal, not kill; and the physicians and scientists who took on the drug companies behind the epidemic. The result is an immensely powerful account of the terrible human cost of the crisis, and a stark warning of the consequences of a healthcare system run as a business, not a service.

Auteur
Chris McGreal is a reporter for the Guardian. A former correspondent in Johannesburg, Jerusalem and Washington DC, he now writes from across the United States. He has won awards for his reporting of the Rwandan genocide, Israel/Palestine, and on the impact of economic recession in America. He received the James Cameron prize for 'work as a journalist that has combined moral vision and professional integrity'. He was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for reporting that 'penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth'.

Texte du rabat

A work of narrative journalism exposing the complex roots and huge damage of the American opioid crisis. Perspectives take in the lives of doctors, addicts, policy-makers, pharmaceutical reps and family members.

Résumé
'A riveting and urgent reckoning of colossal corruption.' - Philip GourevitchOne hundred and fifty Americans are killed each day by the opioid epidemic, described by a former head of the Food and Drug Administration as 'one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine'.