New Documents Show Democrat Mega Donor McKinsey's Role in Opioid Epidemic

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The Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA), a project of the University
of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Johns Hopkins University, today
released more than 114,000 documents related to McKinsey & Company’s work
as a management consulting firm for the opioid industry.

They show how McKinsey advised opioid makers Purdue Pharma, Endo
Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Mallinckrodt to help them increase
sales, despite the growing public outcry over the opioid epidemic. The
documents come from the company’s files between 2004 and 2019 and are
being released under the terms of the $573 million settlement that
McKinsey reached with 47 states, five U.S. territories and the District of
Columbia in February 2021.

The two research universities launched the OIDA in March 2021 as a free
resource for anyone interested in learning more about the circumstances
leading to the opioid crisis, which has contributed to the deaths of more
than half a million people. The archive’s mission is transparency – to
deliver to the public a wealth of information that those who have been
personally affected, as well as researchers, policymakers, and others can
now analyze to gain insights into the epidemic.

These new documents provide insight into McKinsey’s consulting work for
Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers. Materials include scopes of
work, proposals, and invoices; presentations prepared for internal
discussion and for clients (including Purdue Pharma and Endo
Pharmaceuticals); spreadsheets outlining project staffing; and emails
responding to news about increased restrictions on opioids. The collection
also houses letters from regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration, in response to new drug applications from opioid
manufacturers; preparation materials for regulatory advisory committee
meetings; opioid-related transition documents for state and federal
agencies; and other internal files.

“These documents now form a unique and invaluable public resource to help
us comprehend the magnitude of harm done to the millions of Americans
affected by the opioid crisis,” said Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD, MA, William
H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine in the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine. “More generally, they shine a bright light on
the murkier intersections of science, industry, and financial interest
that continue to characterize the U.S. health care system.”

The archive includes new documents as they become available through
resolution of legal action against companies involved in the opioid
industry. It builds upon the foundation of the groundbreaking Truth
Tobacco Industry Documents archive at UCSF, which for more than two
decades has fostered scientific and public health discoveries transforming
tobacco policy in the U.S. and around the world.

Last month, the UCSF-JHU OIDA released 1.4 million documents from the
generic opioid maker Mallinckrodt, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020.
They include emails, memos, presentations, sales reports, budgets, audit
reports, Drug Enforcement Administration briefings, meeting agendas and
minutes, expert witness reports and depositions of company executives.

“Researchers can leverage these litigation documents to see patterns of
industry behavior that could be regulated to protect public health,” said
Dorie Apollonio, PhD, MPP, a professor of clinical pharmacy in the UCSF
School of Pharmacy. “This will be critical to identifying reforms that can
protect against future epidemics like this.”

UCSF and Johns Hopkins University have deep expertise in library science,
information technology and digital archiving. The OIDA also relies on
scholarship focused on many dimensions of the opioid epidemic, ranging
from the history of medicine to pharmaceutical policy to clinical care.
Key organizations at UCSF include the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health
Policy Studies, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Department of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Department of Family and Community Medicine, and
Library. From Johns Hopkins University, the project involves the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Drug Safety and
Effectiveness, Welch Medical Library, Department of the History of
Medicine, and Sheridan Libraries’ Digital Research and Curation Center.

The archive is guided by a national advisory committee that includes
leaders in the field, people who have lost loved ones to the epidemic and
others who have been directly affected by it.

For access to the archives, go to: www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/opioids.

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused
on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide
through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life
sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF
Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes
top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has
affiliations throughout the Bay Area.

Johns Hopkins University is America’s first research university. For more
than 140 years Johns Hopkins has been a world leader in both teaching and
research, with nine academic divisions – the Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering, the Bloomberg School of
Public Health, the Carey Business School, the Peabody Institute, the Paul
H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and the schools of
Medicine, Nursing and Education – plus the Applied Physics Laboratory, a
nonacademic division that supports national security and pursues space
science.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/06/423191/new-documents-show-mckinseys-
role-opioid-epidemic