How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds

2024/06/10 by Sergio Sismondo, Maud Bernisson · 1 voice · 3 citations
Medicine · Neuroscience · Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics · #Opioid Use Disorder Treatment #Pain Management and Placebo Effect #Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare

paper · pdf · doi:10.1136/bmj.q1208

openalex publication_date 2024/06/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

The opioid giant Mallinckrodt, selling more in the US than Purdue Pharma, was forced by the courts to publish more than 1.3 million internal documents. <b>Sergio Sismondo</b> and <b>Maud Bernisson</b> sift through nearly 900 contracts to reveal the tricks used to shape scientific and medical opinions

Cited by

• Purdue's development of abuse-deterrent formulation opioids as a response to market competition: An industry documents analysis
• A portrait of commissioned literature: connecting the dots between medical education and communication companies, authors, funders and publishers
• To be or not to be value-free? A tension in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity

Discussions

• Check out the articles: "How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds" doi.org/10.1136/bmj...., and "Promoting opioids, a story about how to influence medical science and opin [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

Related

• Inside “Operation Change Agent”: Mallinckrodt's Plan for Capturing the Opioid Market
• Diverting Data and Drugs: A Narrative Review of the Mallinckrodt Documents
• Purdue's development of abuse-deterrent formulation opioids as a response to market competition: An industry documents analysis
• Financial structures and family ties: disentangling Purdue Pharma’s corporate ownership structure and the Sackler family wealth
• Opioids for pain treatment of cancer: a knowledge maturity mapping