an epidemic doesn’t need a lot of recruits. It just needs a single superspreader, armed with some rare physiological properties, to stand at the front of a room. The lesson of the opioid crisis is exactly the same. And do you see how vulnerable it made us? The majority of doctors—the overwhelming majority of doctors—treated opioid painkillers such as OxyContin with appropriate caution. The medical community as a whole behaved admirably. They were thoughtful. They looked at the evidence. They heeded the wisdom of the Hippocratic Oath: First do no harm. But that was not enough to prevent us from
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