Tel Aviv University med school to remove opioid crisis-linked Sackler name with family’s consent
The Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, as seen in 2008. Photo by Ofer Vaknin/Haaretz
This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Tel Aviv University’s medical school will no longer bear the Sackler name, after the administration reached an agreement on the issue with the Sackler family.
The decision follows years of pressure on the university to remove the name due to the Sackler family firm’s contribution to the opioid epidemic. The medical school has borne the Sackler name for 50 years.
Many institutions overseas have removed the Sackler name unilaterally, and last month, as part of a bankruptcy settlement plan, a federal court in New York ruled that any American institution can do so without fear of lawsuits as long as they don’t also badmouth the Sacklers. But that ruling doesn’t apply in Israel, so Tel Aviv University preferred to secure the Sacklers’ consent.
The family’s consent also makes it easier for the university to raise new funds for the medical school in exchange for donors’ getting their name on it, since it removes fears that the original donors might someday sue to get their name reinstated.
There are no longer any Sacklers on the board of Purdue Pharma, the company they founded, but their fortune is still estimated at around $11 billion.
Purdue’s biggest commercial success, the opioid OxyContin, was marketed as a nonaddictive painkiller, and various courts later ruled that this false marketing played a significant role in the epidemic of opioid addictions that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The company was also found to have concealed information and paid doctors to promote the drug.
The bankruptcy settlement plan has gone through several iterations, and the family had already agreed to end its control over the company in an earlier version. The settlement also awards compensation to the victims and dismantles Purdue Pharma.
Purdue will be replaced by a new company called Knoa, which will have no connection to the Sacklers and will manufacture not only Purdue’s portfolio of drugs, including OxyContin, but also drugs to treat opioid addiction. Its profits will be used to pay compensation to the victims, and it will be monitored by an outside monitor.
The settlement’s latest version, approved last month, shields the Sacklers from lawsuits over the damages caused by OxyContin in exchange for the family paying the plaintiffs around $6 billion over nine years. This is considered a major victory for the Sacklers, since when Purdue declared bankruptcy, it was facing over 400 lawsuits over its role in the opioid epidemic.
For decades, the Sacklers have donated to dozens of institutions around the world. Aside from their role in establishing the medical school, they have made additional large donations to Tel Aviv University over the years, including to its Faculty of Exact Sciences – which for now will continue bearing the Sackler name.
The many institutions that have previously removed the Sackler name from their facilities include Oxford University – which did so last month – and the Guggenheim and Metropolitan museums in New York.
In a statement jointly drafted by the university and the family, they wrote that “For the last 50 years, the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University has proudly borne the Sackler family name. In a continuing desire and commitment to assist the University and the Faculty to raise funds for medical research, the Sackler family has kindly agreed to remove their name from the Faculty of Medicine.”
“With this move, they will enable the University to offer naming opportunities for the Faculty of Medicine and School of Medicine to new donors. Tel Aviv University gratefully acknowledges the multi-decade contributions of the Sackler family to the development of the Faculty of Medicine into an Israeli and world leader in the health field.”
Hadas Ziv Ethics Committee director at Physicians for Human Rights said that “After years of struggle, the name of the Sackler family is finally being removed from the institution that educates the doctors of the future. I hope that this courageous move will also lead to decisive actions in the fight against the opioid epidemic, as well as to curbing the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the health community and its considerations.”
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