Yale News

Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family will pay $6 billion to victims and survivors of the opioid epidemic, as well as states, for their role in causing the crisis. Despite the ruling and years of mounting criticism of the Sacklers, the University has kept the family’s name on two endowed professorships and an institute.

The $6 billion is 40 percent more than the previously vacated settlement appealed by Connecticut, according to Attorney General William Tong. As part of the agreement, the Sackler family must apologize and allow institutions to remove the Sackler name from buildings and scholarships. Connecticut will receive approximately $95 million from the settlement, which will be used to fund opioid treatment and prevention. The state will receive $5 million from McKinsey and Company for its role in the opioid epidemic, as well as $300 million from distributors who aided and abetted Purdue Pharmaceutical including Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal, McKesson and AmerisourceBergen. After years of pressure to remove the Sackler name from elite institutions, and the Metropolitan Museum of New York’s public decision to remove the Sackler name from seven galleries, Yale has maintained its multiple Sackler connections. 

“No amount of money is ever going to take back the number of people we’ve lost to substance use disorder and the opioid epidemic, but it’s a strong, strong step forward,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the News. “I would rename my own institutions after the Sackler settlement, I would not want to be associated with them. If I were Yale, I would not want to be associated with the Sacklers.”

The announcement is part of the civil case against the company, but the settlement does not preclude the family from facing further criminal action. 

Patrick Radden Keefe LAW ’05, whose book “Empire of Pain” details the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma’s responsibility for the opioid epidemic, outlined the significance of the settlement for the University.

“It’s worth noting that there is a provision in the deal saying that the family won’t be able to pursue legal action against cultural or educational institutions that remove the name,” Radden Keefe told the News. “So…if institutions like Yale continue to keep the name now, it’s really their choice, and not a situation where they are forced to do so out of fear of retaliation.”

In December, University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News that members of the family have “provided gifts over the years” to support research at the University. Peart said she could not provide an updated comment Thursday afternoon.

“The Program in Physics, Engineering, and Biology oversees the activities supported by prior gifts from Raymond and Beverly Sackler,” Peart wrote. “At the School of Medicine, one faculty member currently holds the David A. Sackler chair, a professorship named in connection with a prior gift.”

The Sackler family has endowed two professorships at the Yale School of Medicine  — the David A. Sackler Professor of Pharmacology and the Richard Sackler and Jonathan Sackler Professorship in Internal Medicine — and had also endowed the Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, which has since been restructured inside The Program in Physics, Engineering, and Biology. 

Professor Mark Lemmon is currently the David A. Sackler Professor of Pharmacology. The Richard and Jonathan Sackler Professorship in Internal Medicine was established in 2009 following a $3 million donation from the family, and the position was held by Dr. Thomas Lynch until 2015, when he left the University. The internal medicine professorship was never reassigned to a faculty member.

In 2017, former University Vice President for Communications Eileen O’Connor told the News that once a fund or program is named for a benefactor, the University must receive donor permission in order to rename that center. 

The University declined to comment on whether the Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences was restructured due to controversy surrounding the Sackler family, nor on whether they decided not to appoint a new faculty member to the Richard and Jonathan Sackler Professorship in Internal Medicine for the same reason.

Radden Keefe also explained that the Sacklers who have given gifts to the University — Richard, Raymond and David Sackler — have played an especially significant role within Purdue Pharma and the opioid crisis. 

“The interesting thing with Yale is that on the continuum of guilty [members of the Sackler family], the Sacklers whose names are at Yale are the most guilty, in my view,” he said. 

Raymond Sackler served as one of the founders and owners of Purdue Pharma when it launched OxyContin, while Richard Sackler served as the company’s president and co-chairman and is most associated with its rollout of the drug. David Sackler, for whom one of the professorships is named, is the son of Richard Sackler and served on the board of Purdue Pharma and, according to Radden Keefe, “played a very active role on the board.”

In an email to the News, Joel Rosenbaum, professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the Yale School of Medicine, said that the University ought to go further than just removing the Sackler name. 

“I think it would mean not only removing the Sackler name, but giving back the money to the Sacklers,” he wrote. 

The settlement includes funds that will be available to the city of New Haven, which Mayor Elicker hopes to use to improve the city’s current harm reduction and treatment programs. 

“We want to normalize treatment from a health perspective and not treat opioid use disorder as a criminal offense,” Elicker said. “So my hope is we will use this to help treat people with more health records, more medical treatment, or resources for people that are experiencing this.” 

Purdue Pharmaceutical is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.