Librium and Valium made Arthur Sackler very rich. But even as they were doing so, troubling signs were starting to emerge that the miracle drugs devised by Leo Sternbach at Roche might not be quite so miraculously free from side effects as the advertising campaigns had suggested. Roche had informed doctors and regulators that the drugs could be prescribed without fears of abuse, because unlike barbiturates these tranquilizers were not addictive. As it turned out, this assurance was based more on wishful thinking than on science. In fact, when the company was doing all those clinical trials in
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