Dr. Herschel Jick Character Analysis in Dreamland

A doctor at the Boston University School of Medicine. With his graduate assistant Jane Porter, Jick wrote a letter to the editor that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics.” Often misconstrued as a report, the letter was used by pain advocates and Purdue Pharma to sell and justify the use of opiate painkillers.

Dr. Herschel Jick Character Timeline in Dreamland

The timeline below shows where the character Dr. Herschel Jick appears in Dreamland. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics Theme Icon

Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic Theme Icon

In 1979, 20 years before Enrique will arrive at the Yuma International Airport, Hershel Jick is a doctor at Boston University School of Medicine. Jick starts a database of patient... (full context)

Jick publishes his findings in a single paragraph: of nearly 12,000 patients who were administered opiates... (full context)

...journal, concluding that “opiates themselves were not inherently addictive.” They cite the 1980 Porter and Jick paragraph published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Pain paper asserts that addiction... (full context)

In a way Dr. Hershel Jick couldn’t have predicted, his 1980 letter to the editor in the New England Journal of... (full context)

...eventually specialized in pain management, where he was immersed in rhetoric inspired by Porter and Jick. Katz would go on to prescribe many opiates, including to Peter, the young woman’s brother,... (full context)

In 2005, Hershel Jick was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury at a federal prosecution against Purdue. Meanwhile,... (full context)