Bad Medicine: Catching New York's Deadliest Pill Pusher

by Charlotte Bismuth

Overview

“Charlotte Bismuth gives us a bold and cinematic true crime story about her work at the intersection of medicine and greed. Bad Medicine is a gripping memoir that toggles deftly between the personal and prosecutorial.” —Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick

“Bismuth has written a brilliant account of prosecuting a doctor who became a drug dealer in a white coat. She is haunted by the voices of the dead and listening closely to the voices of the living.” —Nan Goldin, artist, activist, and founder of P.A.I.N.

“Bad Medicine is a taut exploration of America’s deadly battle with opioid addiction—an unnerving and inspirational firecracker of a book.” —Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park

For fans of Dopesick and Bad Blood, the shocking story of New York’s most infamous pill-pushing doctor, written by the prosecutor who brought him down.

In 2010, a brave whistleblower alerted the police to Dr. Stan Li’s corrupt pain management clinic in Queens, New York. Li spent years supplying more than seventy patients a day with oxycodone and Xanax, trading prescriptions for cash. Emergency room doctors, psychiatrists, and desperate family members warned him that his patients were at risk of death but he would not stop.

In Bad Medicine, former prosecutor Charlotte Bismuth meticulously recounts the jaw dropping details of this criminal case that would span four years, culminating in a landmark trial. As a new assistant district attorney and single mother, Bismuth worked tirelessly with her team to bring Dr. Li to justice. Bad Medicine is a chilling story of corruption and greed and an important look at the role individual doctors play in America’s opioid epidemic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982116422
Publisher:	Atria/One Signal Publishers
Publication date:	01/19/2021
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,074,773
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Charlotte Bismuth started her legal career at the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP, and joined the New York County District Attorney’s Office in 2008 as an appellate attorney. In 2010, she transferred into the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, which prosecutes felony narcotics crimes within the City’s five boroughs. She is a graduate of Columbia University, Columbia Law School, and the Instituts d’etudes politiques in Paris. She lives in New York City with her husband and children.

Table of Contents

The People xi

About This Book xiii

Chapter 1 The One to Start With 1

Chapter 2 Sick Little Body 17

Chapter 3 One of the Good Ones 39

Chapter 4 Three Years, Eight Months, Two Days 57

Chapter 5 Who's with Me? 77

Chapter 6 The Fruits of Our Labor 102

Chapter 7 Soft Targets 124

Chapter 8 Modern Medicine 154

Chapter 9 Hope in a Bottle 179

Chapter 10 Civil War 193

Chapter 11 The Gatekeepers 212

Chapter 12 Fireworks 238

Chapter 13 The Kougasian Rule 255

Chapter 14 Angel 276

Chapter 15 May It Please the Court 287

Chapter 16 Sorry for the Loss 304

Epilogue 325

Author's Note 333

Notes 340

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

04/27/2020

In this dramatic true crime debut, attorney Bismuth recounts her role as a member of New York City’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor in helping to convict doctor Stan Li of manslaughter in 2014. With the help of a homicide detective, Bismuth spent four years building the case with testimony from former patients describing how they got opioid prescriptions for cash at Li’s pain clinic in Queens. Meanwhile, Bismuth’s personal life was in shambles as she headed for divorce and single parenthood. Interspersing her blow-by-low rundown of the investigation and trial with vivid flashbacks and flash-forwards, and evidence that opioid prescriptions doubled in New York between 2007 and 2010, Bismuth illustrates the unique difficulties in holding unscrupulous doctors to account for fostering the nationwide opioid epidemic. In one of the book’s most memorable trial scenes, the father of a heroin addict recounts his fruitless efforts to persuade Li to stop overprescribing fentanyl, morphine, Vicodin, and Xanax to his daughter. Bismuth builds tension expertly, and offers hope that the tools of law enforcement can be used to reign in the worst abuses of the medical industry. This gritty page-turner offers a unique perspective on America’s opioid crisis. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"A gripping read tailor-made for the silver screen."
—Kirkus Reviews

In what she calls “a memoir from the trenches,” former prosecutor Bismuth shares her recollections of working on the four-year investigation and 18-week trial of a pill-pushing medical doctor...The takeaways? Prosecutors are human, and bad doctors can destroy lives.
—Booklist

"Bad Medicine is altogether a personal, emotional, brilliant collection of reporting."
—Shondaland

"A measured and powerful account of the landmark case that helped shape our ongoing national response to the opioid crisis. The story will leave readers angry, informed, and most importantly inspired to seek justice and change."
—Former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, founder of The Kennedy Forum, New York Times bestselling author of A Common Struggle

"A spellbinding story about bringing a deadly doctor to justice."
—Patricia McCormick, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestelling author

“Charlotte Bismuth gives us a bold and cinematic true-crime story about her work at the intersection of medicine and greed. Bad Medicine is a gripping memoir that toggles deftly between the personal and prosecutorial.”
—Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick

“BAD MEDICINE is a taut exploration of America’s deadly battle with opioid addiction—an unnerving and inspirational firecracker of a book.”
—Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park

“From the victims of unscrupulous doctors to the detectives who built the investigation to the nail-biting trial of the criminal doctor, Bad Medicine is a must-read. “
—Gerald Posner, New York Times bestselling author of God’s Bankers and Pharma

"This page-turning true detective story blew my mind. Charlotte Bismuth shows, in brilliant detail, what happens when patients become victims. BAD MEDICINE is timely and important; I can't recommend it loudly enough."
—Mona Hanna-Attisha MD MPH, author of What The Eyes Don't See, Flint whistleblower

“A vivid and powerful first person account of the investigation & prosecution of a criminal doctor who helped fuel the opioid crisis.”
—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

From the Publisher

10/01/2020

Bismuth, a former prosecutor, recounts the trial of Stan Li, a Queens, NY, physician who in 2014 was convicted of manslaughter in the overdose deaths of two of his patients. Bismuth was fairly new to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor when she received a tip that Li was writing prescriptions for Xanax and oxycodone in exchange for cash, as well as committing insurance fraud. Carefully detailed accounts of the investigation and trial, including testimony from family members of the victims, are interwoven with recollections from the author's life; as a result, the time line can be confusing, jumping back and forth several times in a chapter. Nevertheless, the author skillfully demonstrates how difficult—but crucial—it was to hold a doctor of Li's qualifications accountable for reckless prescribing. VERDICT Bismuth has made an important contribution to the growing landscape of books documenting the opioid epidemic (Beth Macy's Dopesick; Ryan Hampton's American Fix; Ben Westhoff's Fentanyl, Inc.). Readers horrified by the effects of the opioid crisis will appreciate.—Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Library Journal

2020-09-10
As America’s opioid epidemic gathered pace in the early 2010s, a rookie New York prosecutor went after a physician who sometimes wrote 100 prescriptions a day. Here she tells the story.

“There is no greater misfortune than greed,” observed the judge, quoting Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Bismuth’s lively account of the four-year investigation and trial of Dr. Stan Li—a rogue anesthesiologist who ran a basement pain-management clinic on the weekends—shows the grim human cost of that greed. The author reveals opioid giant Purdue Pharma’s “relentless, misleading, and highly effective” marketing campaign and provides chilling details of the raging epidemic their efforts helped fuel. Between 2007 and 2010, opiate prescriptions jumped 100%. “By 2016,” writes Bismuth, “more than sixty-three thousand human lives would be lost from drug overdoses alone, and...more than forty thousand of those deaths would involve at least one opioid.” As we join the investigation of Li, ultimately tried on 211 counts, including two of homicide, we meet a cast of memorable individuals, from witnesses to addicts to bereaved relatives. These include Margaret Rappold, whose son overdosed at age 21; addict Dawn Tamasi, whose parents begged Dr. Li to stop prescribing after he had given her eight separate drugs; David Laffer, another Li patient, who shot four people as he stole 11,000 pills from a pharmacy; Eddie Valora, the tipster who first alerted the police; and Jean Stone, a Medicare fraud expert who also writes a fashion blog. The narrative jumps backward and forward too often between the investigation and the trial, which can be confusing in certain sections, and the tossed-off title of the book does no service to this vivid first-person narrative. But the author, an attorney, is skilled in her depictions of the courtroom scenes—notably the complex jousting of the expert witnesses.

A gripping read tailor-made for the silver screen.

Kirkus Reviews