[UPDATE as the trial begins tomorrow:
Also on trial is Sunrise Lee, a former stripper who, as an Insys sales manager, enticed physicians into writing more prescriptions, prosecutors said. “Doctors really enjoyed spending time with her and found Sunrise to be a great listener,” another manager, Alec Burlakoff, told colleagues, according to court filings.]
Kapoor Hall, the fancy pharmacy school building at the University of Buffalo, was dedicated only a few years ago, with a big ol’ ribbon-cutting ceremony and all. John Kapoor himself was there to share his inspiring immigrant story, along with tips on how to run a profitable pharma concern with integrity.
Did UB have any inkling when it took his money that, this Monday, Kapoor’s trial, for “conspiring to pay doctors bribes and kickbacks that were disguised as fees for speaking events,” will put quite the spotlight on their decision to monumentalize him? Since Kapoor’s arrest (and the guilty pleas of several of his company’s executives; and the guilty pleas or upcoming trials of a number of bribed doctors — one of whom is a GW grad! This guy “ignored and bullied patients who resisted staying on the powerful pain-killing spray.”), the school has gone this way and that on whether to sandblast the name of a man who basically shoved for-cancer-pain-only fentanyl down the throats of thousands of people who came to their pusher-doctors complaining of sore knees and elbows. Some of those people are dead; quite a few are addicted; and far be it from UD to deny that this represents one logical and popular way to earn billions in the pharma trade… But the question before us is: Wouldn’t a little due diligence (given how relatively late in his criminal career UB did business with him) have spared Buffalo a good deal of trouble and embarrassment?