The Sackler gallery on the National Mall really is amazing. Go see it. Really. Just keep in mind it was brought to you by the pusher man.
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I didn’t, those were the words of Dame Jillian, his third wife (and a Dame as a benefit of the philanthropy you like).
I don’t think that gulf is as wide as you’re making it. If he was some doddering uncle that only collected model trains, you’d have a point. Arthur Sackler made money off of Valium with earlier similar tactics; he developed ways of unethically pushing doctors to prescribe beyond medical need. He directly developed the doctor-tracking company that allowed later Sacklers to find the least ethical and vulnerable doctors to lean on, which was the company’s main reason for existence. It’s not about OXYcontin, it’s that he was the first Sackler to take a broken system and break it further, as his career.
The only reason is that he died. He was invested in all the companies until the day of his death, and they only divested to give the remaining brothers control. He wasn’t outside the fray, he was the fray.
It’s not “assuming the consequence” because we already saw him develop his own crisis that killed people. His marketing of Valium wasn’t philanthropy, it was also predatory. We don’t have to judge “through the modern lens of history”; smarter people at the time recognized the consequences of his unethical behavior. The thing is, he then had a lot of money, and could buy back his personal reputation in instalments.
Pablo Escobar was also a great philanthropist in his time. Should we build statues to him that make no mention of anything negative, because the money in the past was so good?
The problem is when systems have to rely too heavily on the largesse of random rich individuals. If arts organizations can’t afford to be choosy about who they take money from, then it’s broken. (It’s always funny when people who might support government cuts to arts organizations because “art is frivolous” also promote things to the effect of, “art is so sacred, that we should set aside morality itself to preserve it through private donation. His money is a very good man and we should respect that.”)
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Arthur Sackler’s marketing idea with Valium (first used with Terramycin a few years earlier) was to market to physicians, which isn’t the most evil strategy when it comes to getting your medication known, and suggest it was effective for a variety of anxiety-related issues (which in fact it was). The early 60s was a time when everyone was obsessed with psychological issues, and the physicians prescribed a lot of Valium. What A. Sackler did not do, but his brothers apparently did, was intentionally try to get people addicted. He acted out of greed, but also out of a sense of purpose in solving medical problems and (as indicated by his other work) a concern for people. You can’t say that about the other branch of the family, which was greedy and also callous towards the real harm they knew they were doing. I think that’s a major difference.
I understand why journalists have tried to blur the distinction; it peps up the articles, and readers have an easier time with “the Sacklers” rather than distinguishing individuals. Likewise for the “big pharma is evil” community it makes the story about the whole industry rather than evil individuals within it.
For example, this source says:
Dr. Arthur Sackler, a marketing genius in the drug industry in the nineties, used the lofty position of his medical license to assure other doctors that OxyContin, the pain drug created by his Purdue Pharma was not addictive.
That would have been tough since Sackler was dead at that point.
There is a problem with Sackler’s approach to medical promotion, but that it was a problem was not at all obvious at the time. The authors of
describe the situation as follows:
Between 1951 and 1961, 4562 new prescription products were brought to market, and analysts estimated that 70 cents of every dollar spent on drugs in 1961 went toward the purchase of drugs not available 10 years earlier. This deluge of new pharmaceutical products in the postwar era visibly strained the ability of US physicians to remain current with newly available therapeutics.
Pharmaceutical company literature filled the gap left by the inadequacy of continuing education for doctors in the era. Post-Kefauver we now understand the problems that this can lead to.
The problem is when systems have to rely too heavily on the largesse of random rich individuals. If arts organizations can’t afford to be choosy about who they take money from, then it’s broken.
It has been “broken” in this exact way since the middle ages at least.
Did you bring in your own source, just to say it was wrong? I don’t think you read what I wrote, because I never said he made money from OxyContin. The point is that he was unethical before it arrived, and it was his setup that his brothers used to profit from OxyContin.
I know the estate wants to distance themselves from the brothers, and they have the money to cloud the waters, but his unethical practices were central to the Sackler drug marketing fortunes.
He was a predatory drug salesman. He didn’t bring in some anodyne “marketing to physicians”, he brought in bribes, speakers fees, corruption, intentionally misleading doctors about side effects, pushing prescription without diagnosis. He then made a company to target specific doctors to pressure, for sales that had nothing to do with what medical treatment required.
It’s great that you like him better than the other Sacklers, but no one else should cry if some of his vanity plates get removed. He wasn’t a doctor, (Wrong!), he wasn’t an artist; he was a healthcare profiteer who gave some fraction of what he amassed back.
They did deny Valium was addictive at the peak of Valium sales, after scientist and health professional warnings. Fuck him, seriously.
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No, it was an example of lumping the family together.
That is not correct. Not only was he a doctor, he was an important one completely aside from pharmaceutical and marketing issues.
That only makes it worse. He pushed prescription without diagnosis, for profit.
By the way, I wonder if the members of the Arthur Sackler estate are returning the six-figure donations they got from the “worse” Sacklers, made to their various family charities? I suppose drawing attention to that might mess up their “never benefited in any way” claim.
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