The woman who turned down her share of a $6bn settlement to fight the family behind the opioid crisis

Ellen Isaacs is intent on holding Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to account - for the deaths of her son and many thousands of others

A cottage outside Floyd, Virginia, is a tranquil stage-set for Ellen Isaacs to wage one of the longest-running wars of the opioid epidemic: the battle to hold OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma, its owners and executives, to just account.

It's battle that Isaacs, a former mortgage fraud expert at Citigroup, has been fighting since she and her son Ryan became dependent on OxyContin, Purdue Pharma's non-addictive" painkiller that has played a central role in an epidemic that has cost 500,000 lives over two decades.