After two decades in which opioid overdoses claimed more than 400,000 lives in the U.S., two universities have launched an online archive to store documents generated by the many lawsuits filed against drug companies for their role in creating the unprecedented societal crisis.
The goal of the Opioid Industry Documents Archive is to provide transparency into the strategies that were pursued by companies to increase sales of the painkillers — which led to countless cases of opioid use disorder, overdoses, and deaths — in order to prevent a similar episode from occurring again.
“All too often, the general public never gets the benefit from seeing and learning from litigation that takes place behind closed doors,” explained Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and founding director of its Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness, which will help manage the archive.
About the Author Reprints
To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page.
STAT encourages you to share your voice. We welcome your commentary, criticism, and expertise on our subscriber-only platform, STAT+ Connect