The Opioid Billionaire Sacklers at Tufts

At the Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston. Tufts’s main campus is in Medford.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

A disturbing story in the corrupting money chase in higher education has taken place at the Tufts University School of Medicine. There, the school acted from time to time in effect as a shill for Purdue Pharma. That’s the maker of opioid painkillers whose irresponsible (and worse) marketing of opioids at the relentless orders of the outstandingly greedy and status-obsessed Sackler family, which controls the company, has killed many thousands of patients. In what now seems incredible, people connected with Purdue had asserted for several years that their hugely lucrative drug OxyContin wasn’t addictive. All opioids are addictive.

STAT, the health-care news service, reported:

“A STAT review of court documents, two decades of academic papers, tax forms, and funding disclosures suggests that the family and company money that went to Tufts helped to advance their interests, generating goodwill for members of the family who were praised for their philanthropy and amplifying arguments about opioids that dovetailed with their business aims.’’

At one time, a Purdue executive, Dr. David Haddox, was a professor at the school, where he lectured on pain management.

A Massachusetts state lawsuit against Purdue said that the company’s and the Sacklers’ funding enabled it “to control research on the treatment of pain coming out of a prominent and respected institution of learning.’’

To read the STAT article, please hit this link.