June 22, 2025 • 23 mins
Nowadays we often hear about fentanyl in the context of the opioid epidemic. But it began as a medical breakthrough, created by a pharmaceutical genius who was once ranked the second-best Belgian of all time. In this excerpt from the podcast Panic World, Mango and producer Mary explain fentanyl’s fascinating origin story—and the chemistry that makes it such a lucrative investment for cartels.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Hey, their podcast listeners, it's Mango here. I'm
just dropping into the feed today with a little something extra.
It's an excerpt of a much longer conversation that my
producer extraordinaire Mary and I had with Ryan and Grant
(00:36):
from the podcast Panic World. As they like to say
on that show, Panic World is a program about how
the Internet warps our minds and our culture and eventually reality.
So they do these investigations into things like online hoaxes
and so much more. It is a fascinating podcast, and
so for our episode, we took a closer look at
(00:59):
a phenomenon going on four years now. It is the
story of how police officers have been reporting bizarre, extreme
reactions to handling fentanyl. The Panic World team dug into
how these stories have spread online and they asked us
to come in and tell the story of how this
drug was invented. So, you know, we tell this incredible
(01:20):
story of the genius behind fentanyl and how it went
from being an obscure hospital medication to the heart of
this terrible and really deadly epidemic. So what you're about
to hear is part of that story. The full episode
is available now in the Panic World Feed, but we
wanted to give you a taste, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, please help me understand how ventanyl actually works, because
I actually do think at this level of hysteria misinformation,
the average person probably should know.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
At this Yeah, and the story behind it, it's like
pretty remarkable. There's this guy, Paul Janson who discovered it,
who's a stunning character in history. But before we get
to that, I'm going to pass it over to Mary
to talk about the history of opioids and fennyl Well.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Opioids are some of the world's oldest known drugs. The
ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans were using them. But you know,
people have been aware of these addictive qualities, right, This
has been a problem for as long as we've had them,
and so in the eighteen hundreds, morphine was actually isolated
to try to fix that, to try to get the benefit,
the pain relief, the medical benefit without as much of
the addiction and overdose risk. Didn't work out too well
(02:47):
because morphine is morphine. So the next great idea was heroin.
We thought maybe that'll be that'll do it, no one
will get addicted to heroin. Turned out that didn't go
so well either, and so the synthetic opioids came along
in the nineteen thirties, and again the whole idea was,
how can we make something that will have the pain
relief quality that we need without having the risk of addiction,
(03:10):
And so that was actually why people wanted to create
synthetic opioids.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
That's I feel like that's so interesting because I feel
like a large criticism that's thrown at Big Pharma, and
you know me, I'm a huge supporter of Big Pharma.
They sponsored this, yeah, I mean they're they're yeah, of course,
But I do think it's interesting that they're trying to
make a non addictive opioid because like, so much of
what you hear is like they're trying to keep you hooked,
you know. But like this is like a centuries long
(03:37):
process to make.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
A NoMBe because he's so designed to be used in
medical settings. You know, this wasn't stuff that you were
supposed to be running around with. It was stuff that
you know, you're you're having surgery or something, this is
what you need. But all of these things are derived
from similar compounds. They all work kind of the same
way on the brain. They work on what's called the
MW opioid receptors in the brain mew. Of course, all
the Greek nerds out there, No, it's the letter M
(03:59):
and it stands for more. But again, the difference is potency, right,
So fentanyl, it depends on the delivery mechanism, but good
rule of thumb, it's about one hundred times more potent
than morphine. So it is no joke. It's really powerful stuff.
You can use less of it and get the same result, which,
again in a surgical setting, that's a good thing. It
is an incredibly valuable drug and it really did a
(04:20):
lot for the medical fields in which it is supposed
to be used. And my gosh, I know you did
a lot of research about that.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, So I was hinting at this guy, this Belgian doctor,
Paula Jenssen, and he starts working for his family's pharmaceutical
company in the nineteen fifties. His dad sort of imports drugs,
but his life is really extraordinary. When he's eight years old,
his sister is four and she passes away from tubercular meningitis,
and this is the thing that essentially drives his entire life. Right,
(04:48):
He's determined to save people, and he's determined to find
drugs for things that don't exist. And so at the time,
a lot of pharmacies and drug makers are basically just
mixing compounds of things that already exist, and so he's
looking for new ways to attack disease, etc. And so
he has a chemistry lab as a kid in college.
(05:09):
It's during the World War and so like the Nazis
have actually shut down the universities to any higher education,
and somehow he wrangles his way into these universities and
he studies in secret for a number of years. He's
like getting attention from professors and stuff like that, but
he's like continuing his course of education. At twenty one,
he comes to the US and he wins a chess
(05:31):
tournament in Manhattan and uses that to fund his travel.
But he ends up going to like Cornell and Harvard
and talking to professors and inspecting how labs work in
the States, and then he goes back to Belgium. He
has to do compulsory military service, but he borrows money
from his dad. He takes over the third floor of
(05:51):
their office building, and he starts a lab on his own,
and he's really invested in this idea called structure activity relationships,
and it's the idea that like modifying a molecule in
a very specific way can predictably change its biological effects, right,
And so like he's always thinking about chemistry, he's always
(06:11):
thinking about the way that drugs look, the way they interact.
And it's really different from the systems that are working
everywhere else, Like everyone else is basically just doing trial
and error in this very coarse way, and he is
kind of looking at a molecule from the start and
trying to figure out how he can use it and
wield it to attack biological diseases. And what years this
(06:34):
in the nineteen fifties, I didn't realize we were still
like trialing and airing by that way. Yeah, so there's
a little bit before this. I think there's like a
syphilis drug that uses this method. But for the most part,
this ends up being the pioneer of like how startups,
like biological startups or like pharma startups.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like I was going to say, we got to go
back in time and kill the startup. I don't care
about fencanel and how good it is. We got to
kill this guy with a time machine right away.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
He's fascinating because, like he has two mottos. He always
goes around to everyone in his lab. He really doesn't
have much of an ego. He's like a polyglot. He
speaks five languages, but he always asks two questions He
asks his lab Maate's like what's new, because he's always
asking them to look for new ideas, new concepts, just
trying to get them to pluck ideas from wherever they can.
(07:23):
And his other motto is the patient is waiting, right
because he just wants these drugs to come out as
quickly as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That's also kind of ominous if you think about it, though.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the doctor will see that.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But other people in the lab used to clink the
test tubes as he'd walk down the hallway just to
let people in the labs ahead of the way know
that he was going to come and ask pest of
them about like what's new and how to develop things.
But he starts immediately like creating incredible drugs, right. So
one of his drugs that he creates is called hell
Pitterall it's also known as Haldall, creates this in nineteen
(07:57):
fifty eight, and yeah, it's an antipsychotic. It dramatically changes
the lives of people who have schizophrenia. Jansen also comes
up with like a drug for mental cramps. He comes
up with emodium. He's just like coming up with like
by the end of his career, he has I think
one hundred patents and they've come up with seventy five
or eighty drugs. Eight of them are on the World
(08:17):
Health Organization Essential Drugs List. It's remarkable, and he's coming
up with, like, at its peak, a drug a year
is coming out of his lab, and a very effective one.
He's a good businessman, but he's trying to cure things
that actually matter. So like in the end of his
career he shifts his focus to just tropical diseases because
he feels like these people aren't being like tackled. One
of the craziest things I read about him was he
(08:38):
actually saves the terra Cotta soldiers in Cheon because they're
getting destroyed by fungus, and he comes up with this
like anti fungal ointment to basically like preserve all the
terracottas sold like he's really remarkable present.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh sorry, if inventing drugs was a video game and
he cleared it, like he's just doing bide quest, right,
He's just like I don't know, like I'm gonna do
this Terracotta Soldier's fungus one because I'm bored, Like, yeah,
sure sounds good to me.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Back defensial. In nineteen sixty he creates pendyl and he
develops this by modifying the chemical structure of something called
met paridian, which is demarol, and it's another synthetic opioid,
and uh, you know, his goal is, as Mary pointed out,
to improve the onset time. Demorll takes a while to
kick in, and so if he can modify the core
(09:28):
molecules and create this fat soluble compound that crosses the
blood brain barrier more quickly, it actually makes the drug
more effective. Right, So Fenyl gets used in IV drugs
in Europe in nineteen sixty three. It's usually given in
combination with other drugs for anesthesia, but it hits sort
of this speed bump in the US because there's a
(09:51):
guy named doctor Robert Gripps is an anesthesiologist.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Grips nomini of determinism is so awesome being an antistes
theologist named doctor Dripts is a phenomenal. That's crazy words.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And he, you know, in some ways, like Jensen is
ahead of his field. So like he mentors three hundred anesthesiologists,
like eighteen of them become chief anesthesiologists, And as he
is in the profession, they are more and more machines
and monitors for anesthesiology during a surgery. Right, So like
(10:25):
he's he's coming up with this this field at the
same time, and he is really worried that this is
two potent. He's worried that the anesthesiologists can't marger how
fast and titrade it fast enough. He's worried about it
in the operating room, but he's also worried about what
happens if it escapes the operating room. And he's worried
about the addictive nature of it. And this is like
(10:47):
so ahead of his time, right, like in the nineteen
sixties he's thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I mean, like in the nineteen sixties, like people
are just like drinking coding at home. Yeah, this is
like peak housewife codeine problem era. So the fact he's
worried about that is actually pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Completely, but he does realize that this can change surgeries.
And so Jansen and Drips kind of meet and hash
out the details. They meet for us through a mutual friend,
and then they end up discussing and they meet in
the middle essentially where Jansen tries to push through a
drug that the FDA will improve. That's one part ventanyl
to I think it's forty nine parts rapiderol. It's a
(11:28):
new concoction that basically like melds the two. The other
drug is an antipsychotic. It's used to treat nausea, and
one of the side effects is dysphoria. And the idea
is that, like, if you can counter the euphoria fedyl
with this dysphoria, you can sort of make a drug
that still has the effects of sedation and painkilling, but
it reduces the addictive nature of it.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh interesting, So it's like we've made like a really
lame hair yeah, like like it like it's a really
boring heroin. Okay, I see what they're trying to do here.
It's called in.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's a really smart way of dealing with this, right,
and they both agree to it. They're both happy about it.
But by nineteen seventy two, Fennel gets approved for use
alone only in small amounts in control settings. It's packaged
in these one milli liter vials for IVY use in hospitals,
so that again is like to make sure the doses
are so small that it's not being overused even in
(12:22):
the hospital setting. But you know, as I mentioned, Jensen
goes on to having this incredible career. He does so
many things and creates all these drugs. In two thousand
and five, the Belgian public media ran this contest to
name the greatest Belgian of all time, and he comes
in second, after a literal Saint Saint Damien. I know,
(12:44):
it's like Tintin should be first, like the waffle guy.
Second actually is Saint Damien who went and preached and
worked with lepers in Hawaii. But then Jensen's that famous.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's a tough thing to be. That's tough to be
because because he couldn't invent an anti leprosy medicine, so
like he had it that one. That's tough.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But so I mean, what's fascinating is that, you know,
nineteen seventy two, the FDA approved ventanyl for use alone
in these little iv viials in hospitals. Actually, one of
the first overdose deaths in the United States was reported
in nineteen seventy three, so just one year later.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Wow, really really poor.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Ten things to come.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
It was a young man who worked at a hospital
in North Carolina and he was found dead. The autopsy
came back, it showed that he had died of an overdose,
and the local paper described it as a synthetic narcotic
practically unknown outside the health professions, because that's what it was.
It only existed in hospitals, but healthcare workers were starting
to get hooked on it. People were starting to steal
it from work. People were starting to siphon it out
(13:42):
of the ivy bags. And so what really changed everything
was in nineteen eighty one, Ventanyl went off patent and
so when the patent expired, it blew up tenfold increase
in sales in the United States. So this is then
in the mid eighties. You know what's coming. In the
early nineties, the Sackler family.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Are the sponsors of our thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, and so you know, now fentanyl is out there,
it's on the loose, and now people are getting addicted
to opioids in ever increasing numbers, and so what's going
to happen next, Well, the internet happens, and what do
you do with the Internet.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You wouldn't download fentanyl, would you know, but you would
sell it on the dark But before you.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Would do that, you could go read some chemistry papers
that people have uploaded online. Right, whoa, and so it's
a synthetic OPI I'd remember, it's just completely made up
of lab chemical You know a little bit about chemistry,
which I do not because I failed it. If you
read these papers, the molecules are actually not all that complicated.
So people started realizing, well, wait, maybe there's a way
(14:41):
we can just make this and we don't have to
deal with buying it from pharmaceutical companies or sneaking it
out of hospitals.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Is that the same reason why like synthetic marijuana has
spread so aggressively is because you can just make it.
Like I guess I'd never considered that with a synthetic drug.
If you know chemistry, you can just.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well you have to know chemistry and you have to
have access to the right precursor chemicals.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
But I think the difference between something like meth or
synthetic marijuana, et cetera. Is that those are actually harder
to make. The federol is an easier chemical process. You
actually don't have to be a chemist. You can get
trained by someone who can show you essentially.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
So, yeah, the big question mark that I've had actually
this whole episode is where we do get this idea
that it's coming up from Mexico. Because obviously there's a
moment where the cartels realize it's cheaper to put this
stuff in other drugs. That's my understanding is that that's
the major vector for getting people sick in the first place.
But yeah, so how does this all stand.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, so the people who really sort of embrace this
and make a business of it is the Chippeitos who
are l Chopo Gusman's four kids, and they're from two
different mothers. What's fascinating about them to me is that,
like as El Chopo was on the run and he
was tunneling out of various prisons and escaping, people were
really talking about the kids like succession, Like they talk
(15:56):
of them as these sort of like four idiots who
are like, uh, you know, El Chapo had grown up hard,
and these kids had gone to like really fancy schools.
They were spoiled. They dressed flashy completely, and and they
were on Instagram, right, so they were like flashing it
all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They were I remember this, I remember this. I was
following them.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Instagram like tigers and stuff like that, and and and
you know, people think they're just not capable, and also
that they're not capable of classic working together. They think
like there's going to be a power struggle between these
four and and it'll be like succession essentially, right, and
there is a power vacuum when their dad goes to
prison and the cartel fractures. Most of the cartel seems
(16:38):
to go to the side of this guy El Mayo,
who who was El Chapo's right hand man or partner.
But what people forget is that these teens actually did
grow up in the business and and they weren't just
like interning. They got real roles and responsibilities, and they're
actually ruthless and cunning and and so like, instead of
going after the heroin market or marijuana, they really spot
(16:59):
this opportunity to modernize, and it becomes clear that like
even their Instagram positioning is all about the future. They
want to create like a new brand and new branding
mechanism for like young drug lords. They want to like
counter the press narratives in this way. They want to
be seen as human, flashy and innovative, right, and and
they spot this opportunity. Infentanyl, the chemical compounds of precursors
(17:23):
are produced in China and for many years that's where
fentinyl itself was made and then trafficked to North America
via Mexico. But they kind of shore up their power first.
Like one of the brothers, this guy Ivan, he's known
as El Chipedo. He sets up a group called Los
Nini's and this is basically the armed security forces. He
(17:43):
oversees like a notorious group of hitmen and so like.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Until they get exposed by vent Oh no, I touched it?
Oh no, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
See how these four brothers really like take on their
own roles within this thing, right and so, like Alfred
Dio he worked closely with He's good with the financial
aspects and the logistics, so he's really the transportation distribution guy.
Is a guy named a video Al Ratton. He's known
as the Mouse because he's good at evading security but
(18:13):
he's actually the one who supervises the production of these
ventanyl super clandestine facilities that all work isolated from one another.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I do have to say, cartels have the greatest names
for each other. Like, honestly, you got to hand it
to them. They're really good.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's the branding, the branding.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
They're so good at branding. They're so good at branding. Yeah, okay,
so they've.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Built and there's one other guy, Joaquin, who is known
as Alguero. He is the money launderer and he's the
one who's best at ensuring some of the international facilitation
of logistics. He's also heavily into crypto and figures out
how to like launder money through a crystals right like crypto.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Never trust hold on, I was gonna say, the only
person who's ever figured out how to launder money through
crypto this one guy. Nobody else has ever done that.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I was kind of with them until you told me
they were into crypto, and now.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, like I can get behind a narco state,
but I don't think I got to draw behind like
crypto currency. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So anyway, they're kind of this voltron of like drug operations, logistics,
and they spot this opportunity and by twenty fourteen they've
set up their own federyl production labs. And at the
time they're also aided by crackdowns in China and a
Mexican president who relaxes the war on cartels.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, he's been a character in a couple other episodes
we've done on Andreas Manuel Lopez Abdor. Yeah, he wanted
to hug all the cartels.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
And China was starting to make it harder for people
to actually make fentanyl there. The chemicals were fine, the
fentanyl itself was not icee.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So they're getting these chemicals shipped to small attinerant labs
and they're using them to synthesize fennyl. But what's really amazing,
and obviously they're smuggling the product to the US. What's
stunning is the economics on this stuff. For just eight
hundred dollars of precursor chemicals, they make a six hundred
and forty thousand dollars profit. So like if you scale
(20:09):
it up right, like a million dollar investment makes about
eight hundred million dollars in profit.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
That's yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so like they're using crypto to launder money, they're sophisticated.
They're making billions of dollars, and obviously they're causing one
hundred thousand deaths in the US every year, but the
volume is insane, Like in twenty twenty four, the DEA
reports it seized over sixty million feneryl laced fake pills
and nearly eight thousand pounds of fedyl powder, which equated
(20:36):
to more than three hundred eighty million lethal doses. And
in May of this year there was another big drug bus.
They captured four hundred kilograms of feneryl and two point
seven million pills, along with cash and other drugs. And
the thing is, at that volume, you can afford to
lose a lot of batches and still make a ton
of money. And and so like they're breaking it in.
(20:56):
They've come across this incredible business model. As Mary was
pointing out, there's nothing inherently wrong with the chemicals themselves.
And the reason China makes these precursors because you know
they're used in over the counter drugs sometimes prescription drugs,
also plastics, pesticides, fragrances. Right, even if the authorities cracked
down on one type of these precursors, chemists can figure
(21:18):
out a clever way to come up with alternatives. There's
kind of no crushing this source of materials.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I found a really great analogy about making fentanyl where
it described it as I want to say it was
a Reuter's article, but it talked about it like a
mister potato head, Like the core ring of the fentanyl
molecule is the head. And then there's successories that you
can put on. But if you have the ears from
one box or the ears from another box, they still
fit in the air hole, right, So you can ban
(21:45):
twelve different precursor chemicals, but then there's ninety others that
you can plug into those holes if you know what
you're doing, and the effect will generally be about the same.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Thank you so much to Ryan and Grant at Panic
World for having us on and asking us to do
this collaboration. It was really really wonderful. Please go check
them out, listen to the rest of the conversation, and
while you're at it, be sure to subscribe to Part
Time Genius on your favorite podcast app. We'll be back
soon with a new episode, but in the meantime, From
Will Dylan, Gabe, Mary and myself, thank you so much
(22:20):
for listening Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and
(22:41):
me Mongais Chatikler and research by our good pal Mary
Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the
wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show
is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry,
with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts
and Viny Shory. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio,
(23:05):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Hey, their podcast listeners, it's Mango here. I'm
just dropping into the feed today with a little something extra.
It's an excerpt of a much longer conversation that my
producer extraordinaire Mary and I had with Ryan and Grant
(00:36):
from the podcast Panic World. As they like to say
on that show, Panic World is a program about how
the Internet warps our minds and our culture and eventually reality.
So they do these investigations into things like online hoaxes
and so much more. It is a fascinating podcast, and
so for our episode, we took a closer look at
(00:59):
a phenomenon going on four years now. It is the
story of how police officers have been reporting bizarre, extreme
reactions to handling fentanyl. The Panic World team dug into
how these stories have spread online and they asked us
to come in and tell the story of how this
drug was invented. So, you know, we tell this incredible
(01:20):
story of the genius behind fentanyl and how it went
from being an obscure hospital medication to the heart of
this terrible and really deadly epidemic. So what you're about
to hear is part of that story. The full episode
is available now in the Panic World Feed, but we
wanted to give you a taste, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, please help me understand how ventanyl actually works, because
I actually do think at this level of hysteria misinformation,
the average person probably should know.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
At this Yeah, and the story behind it, it's like
pretty remarkable. There's this guy, Paul Janson who discovered it,
who's a stunning character in history. But before we get
to that, I'm going to pass it over to Mary
to talk about the history of opioids and fennyl Well.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Opioids are some of the world's oldest known drugs. The
ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans were using them. But you know,
people have been aware of these addictive qualities, right, This
has been a problem for as long as we've had them,
and so in the eighteen hundreds, morphine was actually isolated
to try to fix that, to try to get the benefit,
the pain relief, the medical benefit without as much of
the addiction and overdose risk. Didn't work out too well
(02:47):
because morphine is morphine. So the next great idea was heroin.
We thought maybe that'll be that'll do it, no one
will get addicted to heroin. Turned out that didn't go
so well either, and so the synthetic opioids came along
in the nineteen thirties, and again the whole idea was,
how can we make something that will have the pain
relief quality that we need without having the risk of addiction,
(03:10):
And so that was actually why people wanted to create
synthetic opioids.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
That's I feel like that's so interesting because I feel
like a large criticism that's thrown at Big Pharma, and
you know me, I'm a huge supporter of Big Pharma.
They sponsored this, yeah, I mean they're they're yeah, of course,
But I do think it's interesting that they're trying to
make a non addictive opioid because like, so much of
what you hear is like they're trying to keep you hooked,
you know. But like this is like a centuries long
(03:37):
process to make.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
A NoMBe because he's so designed to be used in
medical settings. You know, this wasn't stuff that you were
supposed to be running around with. It was stuff that
you know, you're you're having surgery or something, this is
what you need. But all of these things are derived
from similar compounds. They all work kind of the same
way on the brain. They work on what's called the
MW opioid receptors in the brain mew. Of course, all
the Greek nerds out there, No, it's the letter M
(03:59):
and it stands for more. But again, the difference is potency, right,
So fentanyl, it depends on the delivery mechanism, but good
rule of thumb, it's about one hundred times more potent
than morphine. So it is no joke. It's really powerful stuff.
You can use less of it and get the same result, which,
again in a surgical setting, that's a good thing. It
is an incredibly valuable drug and it really did a
(04:20):
lot for the medical fields in which it is supposed
to be used. And my gosh, I know you did
a lot of research about that.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, So I was hinting at this guy, this Belgian doctor,
Paula Jenssen, and he starts working for his family's pharmaceutical
company in the nineteen fifties. His dad sort of imports drugs,
but his life is really extraordinary. When he's eight years old,
his sister is four and she passes away from tubercular meningitis,
and this is the thing that essentially drives his entire life. Right,
(04:48):
He's determined to save people, and he's determined to find
drugs for things that don't exist. And so at the time,
a lot of pharmacies and drug makers are basically just
mixing compounds of things that already exist, and so he's
looking for new ways to attack disease, etc. And so
he has a chemistry lab as a kid in college.
(05:09):
It's during the World War and so like the Nazis
have actually shut down the universities to any higher education,
and somehow he wrangles his way into these universities and
he studies in secret for a number of years. He's
like getting attention from professors and stuff like that, but
he's like continuing his course of education. At twenty one,
he comes to the US and he wins a chess
(05:31):
tournament in Manhattan and uses that to fund his travel.
But he ends up going to like Cornell and Harvard
and talking to professors and inspecting how labs work in
the States, and then he goes back to Belgium. He
has to do compulsory military service, but he borrows money
from his dad. He takes over the third floor of
(05:51):
their office building, and he starts a lab on his own,
and he's really invested in this idea called structure activity relationships,
and it's the idea that like modifying a molecule in
a very specific way can predictably change its biological effects, right,
And so like he's always thinking about chemistry, he's always
(06:11):
thinking about the way that drugs look, the way they interact.
And it's really different from the systems that are working
everywhere else, Like everyone else is basically just doing trial
and error in this very coarse way, and he is
kind of looking at a molecule from the start and
trying to figure out how he can use it and
wield it to attack biological diseases. And what years this
(06:34):
in the nineteen fifties, I didn't realize we were still
like trialing and airing by that way. Yeah, so there's
a little bit before this. I think there's like a
syphilis drug that uses this method. But for the most part,
this ends up being the pioneer of like how startups,
like biological startups or like pharma startups.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Like I was going to say, we got to go
back in time and kill the startup. I don't care
about fencanel and how good it is. We got to
kill this guy with a time machine right away.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
He's fascinating because, like he has two mottos. He always
goes around to everyone in his lab. He really doesn't
have much of an ego. He's like a polyglot. He
speaks five languages, but he always asks two questions He
asks his lab Maate's like what's new, because he's always
asking them to look for new ideas, new concepts, just
trying to get them to pluck ideas from wherever they can.
(07:23):
And his other motto is the patient is waiting, right
because he just wants these drugs to come out as
quickly as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
That's also kind of ominous if you think about it, though.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the doctor will see that.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
But other people in the lab used to clink the
test tubes as he'd walk down the hallway just to
let people in the labs ahead of the way know
that he was going to come and ask pest of
them about like what's new and how to develop things.
But he starts immediately like creating incredible drugs, right. So
one of his drugs that he creates is called hell
Pitterall it's also known as Haldall, creates this in nineteen
(07:57):
fifty eight, and yeah, it's an antipsychotic. It dramatically changes
the lives of people who have schizophrenia. Jansen also comes
up with like a drug for mental cramps. He comes
up with emodium. He's just like coming up with like
by the end of his career, he has I think
one hundred patents and they've come up with seventy five
or eighty drugs. Eight of them are on the World
(08:17):
Health Organization Essential Drugs List. It's remarkable, and he's coming
up with, like, at its peak, a drug a year
is coming out of his lab, and a very effective one.
He's a good businessman, but he's trying to cure things
that actually matter. So like in the end of his
career he shifts his focus to just tropical diseases because
he feels like these people aren't being like tackled. One
of the craziest things I read about him was he
(08:38):
actually saves the terra Cotta soldiers in Cheon because they're
getting destroyed by fungus, and he comes up with this
like anti fungal ointment to basically like preserve all the
terracottas sold like he's really remarkable present.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh sorry, if inventing drugs was a video game and
he cleared it, like he's just doing bide quest, right,
He's just like I don't know, like I'm gonna do
this Terracotta Soldier's fungus one because I'm bored, Like, yeah,
sure sounds good to me.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Back defensial. In nineteen sixty he creates pendyl and he
develops this by modifying the chemical structure of something called
met paridian, which is demarol, and it's another synthetic opioid,
and uh, you know, his goal is, as Mary pointed out,
to improve the onset time. Demorll takes a while to
kick in, and so if he can modify the core
(09:28):
molecules and create this fat soluble compound that crosses the
blood brain barrier more quickly, it actually makes the drug
more effective. Right, So Fenyl gets used in IV drugs
in Europe in nineteen sixty three. It's usually given in
combination with other drugs for anesthesia, but it hits sort
of this speed bump in the US because there's a
(09:51):
guy named doctor Robert Gripps is an anesthesiologist.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Grips nomini of determinism is so awesome being an antistes
theologist named doctor Dripts is a phenomenal. That's crazy words.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
And he, you know, in some ways, like Jensen is
ahead of his field. So like he mentors three hundred anesthesiologists,
like eighteen of them become chief anesthesiologists, And as he
is in the profession, they are more and more machines
and monitors for anesthesiology during a surgery. Right, So like
(10:25):
he's he's coming up with this this field at the
same time, and he is really worried that this is
two potent. He's worried that the anesthesiologists can't marger how
fast and titrade it fast enough. He's worried about it
in the operating room, but he's also worried about what
happens if it escapes the operating room. And he's worried
about the addictive nature of it. And this is like
(10:47):
so ahead of his time, right, like in the nineteen
sixties he's thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I mean, like in the nineteen sixties, like people
are just like drinking coding at home. Yeah, this is
like peak housewife codeine problem era. So the fact he's
worried about that is actually pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Completely, but he does realize that this can change surgeries.
And so Jansen and Drips kind of meet and hash
out the details. They meet for us through a mutual friend,
and then they end up discussing and they meet in
the middle essentially where Jansen tries to push through a
drug that the FDA will improve. That's one part ventanyl
to I think it's forty nine parts rapiderol. It's a
(11:28):
new concoction that basically like melds the two. The other
drug is an antipsychotic. It's used to treat nausea, and
one of the side effects is dysphoria. And the idea
is that, like, if you can counter the euphoria fedyl
with this dysphoria, you can sort of make a drug
that still has the effects of sedation and painkilling, but
it reduces the addictive nature of it.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh interesting, So it's like we've made like a really
lame hair yeah, like like it like it's a really
boring heroin. Okay, I see what they're trying to do here.
It's called in.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's a really smart way of dealing with this, right,
and they both agree to it. They're both happy about it.
But by nineteen seventy two, Fennel gets approved for use
alone only in small amounts in control settings. It's packaged
in these one milli liter vials for IVY use in hospitals,
so that again is like to make sure the doses
are so small that it's not being overused even in
(12:22):
the hospital setting. But you know, as I mentioned, Jensen
goes on to having this incredible career. He does so
many things and creates all these drugs. In two thousand
and five, the Belgian public media ran this contest to
name the greatest Belgian of all time, and he comes
in second, after a literal Saint Saint Damien. I know,
(12:44):
it's like Tintin should be first, like the waffle guy.
Second actually is Saint Damien who went and preached and
worked with lepers in Hawaii. But then Jensen's that famous.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's a tough thing to be. That's tough to be
because because he couldn't invent an anti leprosy medicine, so
like he had it that one. That's tough.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But so I mean, what's fascinating is that, you know,
nineteen seventy two, the FDA approved ventanyl for use alone
in these little iv viials in hospitals. Actually, one of
the first overdose deaths in the United States was reported
in nineteen seventy three, so just one year later.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Wow, really really poor.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Ten things to come.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
It was a young man who worked at a hospital
in North Carolina and he was found dead. The autopsy
came back, it showed that he had died of an overdose,
and the local paper described it as a synthetic narcotic
practically unknown outside the health professions, because that's what it was.
It only existed in hospitals, but healthcare workers were starting
to get hooked on it. People were starting to steal
it from work. People were starting to siphon it out
(13:42):
of the ivy bags. And so what really changed everything
was in nineteen eighty one, Ventanyl went off patent and
so when the patent expired, it blew up tenfold increase
in sales in the United States. So this is then
in the mid eighties. You know what's coming. In the
early nineties, the Sackler family.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Are the sponsors of our thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, and so you know, now fentanyl is out there,
it's on the loose, and now people are getting addicted
to opioids in ever increasing numbers, and so what's going
to happen next, Well, the internet happens, and what do
you do with the Internet.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You wouldn't download fentanyl, would you know, but you would
sell it on the dark But before you.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Would do that, you could go read some chemistry papers
that people have uploaded online. Right, whoa, and so it's
a synthetic OPI I'd remember, it's just completely made up
of lab chemical You know a little bit about chemistry,
which I do not because I failed it. If you
read these papers, the molecules are actually not all that complicated.
So people started realizing, well, wait, maybe there's a way
(14:41):
we can just make this and we don't have to
deal with buying it from pharmaceutical companies or sneaking it
out of hospitals.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Is that the same reason why like synthetic marijuana has
spread so aggressively is because you can just make it.
Like I guess I'd never considered that with a synthetic drug.
If you know chemistry, you can just.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well you have to know chemistry and you have to
have access to the right precursor chemicals.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
But I think the difference between something like meth or
synthetic marijuana, et cetera. Is that those are actually harder
to make. The federol is an easier chemical process. You
actually don't have to be a chemist. You can get
trained by someone who can show you essentially.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
So, yeah, the big question mark that I've had actually
this whole episode is where we do get this idea
that it's coming up from Mexico. Because obviously there's a
moment where the cartels realize it's cheaper to put this
stuff in other drugs. That's my understanding is that that's
the major vector for getting people sick in the first place.
But yeah, so how does this all stand.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, so the people who really sort of embrace this
and make a business of it is the Chippeitos who
are l Chopo Gusman's four kids, and they're from two
different mothers. What's fascinating about them to me is that,
like as El Chopo was on the run and he
was tunneling out of various prisons and escaping, people were
really talking about the kids like succession, Like they talk
(15:56):
of them as these sort of like four idiots who
are like, uh, you know, El Chapo had grown up hard,
and these kids had gone to like really fancy schools.
They were spoiled. They dressed flashy completely, and and they
were on Instagram, right, so they were like flashing it
all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They were I remember this, I remember this. I was
following them.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Instagram like tigers and stuff like that, and and and
you know, people think they're just not capable, and also
that they're not capable of classic working together. They think
like there's going to be a power struggle between these
four and and it'll be like succession essentially, right, and
there is a power vacuum when their dad goes to
prison and the cartel fractures. Most of the cartel seems
(16:38):
to go to the side of this guy El Mayo,
who who was El Chapo's right hand man or partner.
But what people forget is that these teens actually did
grow up in the business and and they weren't just
like interning. They got real roles and responsibilities, and they're
actually ruthless and cunning and and so like, instead of
going after the heroin market or marijuana, they really spot
(16:59):
this opportunity to modernize, and it becomes clear that like
even their Instagram positioning is all about the future. They
want to create like a new brand and new branding
mechanism for like young drug lords. They want to like
counter the press narratives in this way. They want to
be seen as human, flashy and innovative, right, and and
they spot this opportunity. Infentanyl, the chemical compounds of precursors
(17:23):
are produced in China and for many years that's where
fentinyl itself was made and then trafficked to North America
via Mexico. But they kind of shore up their power first.
Like one of the brothers, this guy Ivan, he's known
as El Chipedo. He sets up a group called Los
Nini's and this is basically the armed security forces. He
(17:43):
oversees like a notorious group of hitmen and so like.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Until they get exposed by vent Oh no, I touched it?
Oh no, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
See how these four brothers really like take on their
own roles within this thing, right and so, like Alfred
Dio he worked closely with He's good with the financial
aspects and the logistics, so he's really the transportation distribution guy.
Is a guy named a video Al Ratton. He's known
as the Mouse because he's good at evading security but
(18:13):
he's actually the one who supervises the production of these
ventanyl super clandestine facilities that all work isolated from one another.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
I do have to say, cartels have the greatest names
for each other. Like, honestly, you got to hand it
to them. They're really good.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
It's the branding, the branding.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
They're so good at branding. They're so good at branding. Yeah, okay,
so they've.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Built and there's one other guy, Joaquin, who is known
as Alguero. He is the money launderer and he's the
one who's best at ensuring some of the international facilitation
of logistics. He's also heavily into crypto and figures out
how to like launder money through a crystals right like crypto.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Never trust hold on, I was gonna say, the only
person who's ever figured out how to launder money through
crypto this one guy. Nobody else has ever done that.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I was kind of with them until you told me
they were into crypto, and now.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, like I can get behind a narco state,
but I don't think I got to draw behind like
crypto currency. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
So anyway, they're kind of this voltron of like drug operations, logistics,
and they spot this opportunity and by twenty fourteen they've
set up their own federyl production labs. And at the
time they're also aided by crackdowns in China and a
Mexican president who relaxes the war on cartels.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, he's been a character in a couple other episodes
we've done on Andreas Manuel Lopez Abdor. Yeah, he wanted
to hug all the cartels.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
And China was starting to make it harder for people
to actually make fentanyl there. The chemicals were fine, the
fentanyl itself was not icee.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So they're getting these chemicals shipped to small attinerant labs
and they're using them to synthesize fennyl. But what's really amazing,
and obviously they're smuggling the product to the US. What's
stunning is the economics on this stuff. For just eight
hundred dollars of precursor chemicals, they make a six hundred
and forty thousand dollars profit. So like if you scale
(20:09):
it up right, like a million dollar investment makes about
eight hundred million dollars in profit.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
That's yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so like they're using crypto to launder money, they're sophisticated.
They're making billions of dollars, and obviously they're causing one
hundred thousand deaths in the US every year, but the
volume is insane, Like in twenty twenty four, the DEA
reports it seized over sixty million feneryl laced fake pills
and nearly eight thousand pounds of fedyl powder, which equated
(20:36):
to more than three hundred eighty million lethal doses. And
in May of this year there was another big drug bus.
They captured four hundred kilograms of feneryl and two point
seven million pills, along with cash and other drugs. And
the thing is, at that volume, you can afford to
lose a lot of batches and still make a ton
of money. And and so like they're breaking it in.
(20:56):
They've come across this incredible business model. As Mary was
pointing out, there's nothing inherently wrong with the chemicals themselves.
And the reason China makes these precursors because you know
they're used in over the counter drugs sometimes prescription drugs,
also plastics, pesticides, fragrances. Right, even if the authorities cracked
down on one type of these precursors, chemists can figure
(21:18):
out a clever way to come up with alternatives. There's
kind of no crushing this source of materials.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I found a really great analogy about making fentanyl where
it described it as I want to say it was
a Reuter's article, but it talked about it like a
mister potato head, Like the core ring of the fentanyl
molecule is the head. And then there's successories that you
can put on. But if you have the ears from
one box or the ears from another box, they still
fit in the air hole, right, So you can ban
(21:45):
twelve different precursor chemicals, but then there's ninety others that
you can plug into those holes if you know what
you're doing, and the effect will generally be about the same.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Thank you so much to Ryan and Grant at Panic
World for having us on and asking us to do
this collaboration. It was really really wonderful. Please go check
them out, listen to the rest of the conversation, and
while you're at it, be sure to subscribe to Part
Time Genius on your favorite podcast app. We'll be back
soon with a new episode, but in the meantime, From
Will Dylan, Gabe, Mary and myself, thank you so much
(22:20):
for listening Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and
(22:41):
me Mongais Chatikler and research by our good pal Mary
Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the
wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show
is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry,
with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts
and Viny Shory. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio,
(23:05):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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