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Opioid Industry Documents
The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) added more than 11,500 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2013 & 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from sales to speakers bureau training.
The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024.
New Collection - West Virginia DEA Investigation Collection
The 418 records in this new collection were obtained as a result of the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office multi-year investigation into the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s process of setting aggregate production quotas (APQs) for controlled substances.
The West Virginia Attorney General alleged that the DEA’s quota setting process was flawed and resulted in an overproduction of opioids which contributed to the drug crisis in West Virginia and elsewhere. The AGO submitted multiple FOIA requests to the DEA and received several batches of responsive documents.
35 additional transcripts of video declarations have been added to the SF Walgreen Litigation Collection.
Bibliography updates:
Five new papers and publications were added to the IDL Bibliography this month including:
Gaber, Nadia; Bero, Lisa; Woodruff, Tracey J. The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science. Annals of Global Health 2023 June 01.
Robert Fife, Steven Chase & Bill Curry. McKinsey pitched Purdue Pharma Canada on plan to boost opioid sales in 2014, memo reveals. The Globe and Mail, 2023 June 19.
Opioid Industry Documents Archive
We added 127,511 documents to the UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive's Insys Litigation Documents collection. These documents, which arise from Insys’s early years bringing the fentanyl spray Subsys to market (2012–2013), shed new light on the genesis of the company’s speaker program and reimbursement center (See the Insys At a Glance page for more information), both of which have featured prominently in litigation against Insys.
This release is the fourth batch of Insys documents to be added to OIDA; the Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents will be made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024. Information arising from a December 2022 release (UCSF News, Johns Hopkins University News) served as the basis for reporting from USA Today.
Opioid Industry Documents Archive National Advisory Committee Update
We are pleased to welcome four new members to our National Advisory Committee, a group that supports the Archive through expert recommendations on the project’s development and sustainability pertaining to use, transparency, accessibility, impact, and other measures: Sandy Alexander (former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General), Michelle Muffett-Lipinski (recovery advocate and Founding Principal, Northshore Recovery High School), Melina Sherman (communications scholar, Knology), and Anthony Ryan Hatch (Professor of the Science in Society Program, Wesleyan University). Many thanks to our outgoing NAC member Beth Macy (author of Raising Lazarus and Dopesick) for her remarkable service.
3,600+ New USRTK Food Industry Documents Added
The 3,634 new documents posted today were donated by USRTK and acquired in their ongoing investigations into the influence of large food and beverage companies on academic partnerships and government regulatory processes around sugary beverages and obesity, among other topics.
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Opioid Industry Documents Research and Community Data Engagement -
The UCSF OIDA Postdoctoral Fellow will pursue original, publishable research using materials housed in OIDA and work closely with the archive research team to enhance the accessibility and usability of archival materials for a diverse array of communities, with a particular focus on racial and health equity. Fellows will work on a multidisciplinary team including faculty, other postdoctoral fellows and research assistants and will be mentored by and work closely with researchers and information specialists at UCSF. Fellows will be based at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/) and participate fully in the fellowship program. Fellows will also be affiliated with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the UCSF School of Medicine (https://humsci.ucsf.edu/).
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tobacco Control Research -
The CTCRE Postdoctoral Fellowship offers diverse educational and research opportunities, including a grant writing seminar, graduate research positions, advocacy training, and individualized documents training. Work spans policy and historical research, economics, and science. Fellows are recruited from a variety of fields including the basic sciences, social sciences, public health practitioners, clinical fields, political science, history, economics, law, and marketing.
Fellowship stipends range from $55,500 - $66,600, depending on years of postdoctoral experience.
More about the fellowships and application submission
The Digital Health Humanities Pilot (DHHP) will facilitate new insights into historical health data. Participants from all disciplines (including faculty, staff, and other learners) will learn how to evaluate and integrate digital methods and “archives as data” into their research through a range of offerings and trainings utilizing datasets from holdings within the UCSF Archives and Special Collections (including the AIDS History Project and Industry Documents Library, among others.)
Check out the workshops and sign up!
UC Love Data Week (February 13-17)
Want more information on working with data?
The UC-wide Love Data Week offers free sessions on topics such as data access, management, security, sharing, and preservation.
As 2022 comes to a close, we’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you for your continuing support and connection to the Industry Documents Library.
We’re grateful for your interest in industry documents and for your participation in the IDL community, whether that’s through documents research, workshops and trainings, project partnerships, or strategic planning and guidance.
This year we celebrated 20 years (!!!) of making industry documents available online and we appreciate all the ways you’ve worked with us to make the IDL stronger.
Here are some of the achievements you helped us reach in 2022:
17,508,831 documents now available through IDL!
We added 2.3 million new documents to the collections in 2022 -
If you’re able, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Industry Documents Library to help us preserve and provide access to the collections for years to come.
From all of us at the IDL, we wish you a safe and festive holiday season, and a healthy and hopeful New Year ahead.
Kate, Rachel, Rebecca, Sven, Melissa and Erik William Sanjour Hazardous Waste Papers
We are very excited to announce the addition of this collection to our Chemical Industry Documents Archive. This first batch of documents will be joined by another 1700+ in the coming month so stay tuned!
In 1974, William Sanjour was appointed branch chief at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) newly formed Hazardous Waste Management Division. In this position, he was to guide the agency in implementing its new responsibilities regulating industrial hazardous waste disposal. Increasingly concerned about industry interference and pressure on the EPA, Sanjour became a whistle-blower in 1978 in order to expose senior EPA officials' efforts to weaken environmental protection regulations. This collection contains a wealth of information on the inner workings of the Agency and the various EPA administrators, some of whom became consultants to waste management companies including Douglas Costle, Walter Barber, Lee Thomas and Rita Lavelle.
In the introduction to his 2013 memoir, Sanjour writes, "I confess I have a terrible memory and at eighty years of age it’s not getting any better. Because of my bad memory I’ve always saved documents, newspapers, and anything I thought might come in handy. However on becoming a whistle-blower this became doubly important as the government was constantly trying to invent ways to fire me. I have a filing cabinet next to me with four drawers of documents covering my thirty years at EPA as well as several boxes of documents. This collection has served me well over the years. It has provided source material and supporting material for many things I have written and said." In 2018, the 'drawers full of documents' were donated by Mr. Sanjour and digitized by the Bioscience Resource Project. In total, this collection contains 2500+ documents that shine a light on political and industry pressures on EPA regulators, as well as the pressures brought to bear on whistle-blowers in an attempt to silence them.