person:robert josephson

Gifts Tied to Opioid Sales Invite a Question : Should Museums Vet Donors ? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/arts/design/sackler-museum-donations-oxycontin-purdue-pharma.html

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The New York Times surveyed 21 cultural organizations listed on tax forms as having received significant sums from foundations run by two Sackler brothers who led Purdue. Several, including the Guggenheim, declined to comment; others, like the Brooklyn Museum, ignored questions. None indicated that they would return donations or refuse them in the future.

“We regularly assess our funding activities to ensure best practice,” wrote Zoë Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was listed as receiving about $13.1 million from the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation in 2012. “The Sackler family continue to be an important and valuable donor to the V & A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

De l’usage de la philanthropie comme écran de fumée

Robert Josephson, a spokesman for the company, pointed to its efforts to stem the opioid epidemic — distributing prescription guidelines, developing abuse-deterrent painkillers and ensuring access to overdose-reversal medication — and noted that OxyContin has never had a large share of total opioid prescriptions. In an email, he added, “Many leading medical, scientific, cultural and educational institutions throughout the world have been beneficiaries of Sackler family philanthropy.”

#Sackler #Philanthropie #Opioides #Musées

Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html

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Prosecutors found that the company’s sales representatives used the words “street value,” “crush,” or “snort” in 117 internal notes recording their visits to doctors or other medical professionals from 1997 through 1999.

The 120-page report also cited emails showing that Purdue Pharma’s owners, members of the wealthy Sackler family, were sent reports about abuse of OxyContin and another company opioid, MS Contin.
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“We have in fact picked up references to abuse of our opioid products on the internet,” Purdue Pharma’s general counsel, Howard R. Udell, wrote in early 1999 to another company official. That same year, prosecutors said, company officials learned of a call to a pharmacy describing “OxyContin as the hottest thing on the street — forget Vicodin.”

A spokesman for Purdue Pharma, Robert Josephson, declined to comment on the allegations in the report but said the company was involved in efforts to address opioid abuse.

“ Suggesting that activities that last occurred more than 16 years ago are responsible for today’s complex and multifaceted opioid crisis is deeply flawed ,” he said in a statement.

La famille sacquer savait, dès le début...

In May 1996, five months after OxyContin’s approval, Richard Sackler and Mr. Udell were sent an older medical journal article describing how drug abusers were extracting morphine from MS Contin tablets in order to inject the drug , prosecutors reported. A Purdue Pharma scientist researched the issue and sent his findings to several Sacklers, the government report states.
“I found MS Contin mentioned a couple of times on the internet underground drug culture scene,” the researcher wrote in that 1996 email. “Most of it was mentioned in the context of MS Contin as a morphine source.”

#Opioides #Sackler

Opioid Makers, Blamed for Overdose Epidemic, Cut Back on… — ProPublica
▻https://www.propublica.org/article/opioid-makers-blamed-for-overdose-epidemic-cut-back-on-marketing-payment

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The past two years have been a time of reckoning for pharmaceutical manufacturers over their role in promoting opioid drugs that have fed a national epidemic.

Lawsuits and media reports have accused Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, of aggressively marketing the powerful narcotic even after it knew the drug was being misused. Prosecutors have charged the founder of Insys Therapeutics and several of the company’s sales representatives and executives for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to bribe doctors to use its fentanyl spray for unapproved uses. State and local governments have sued a host of drugmakers, alleging they deceptively marketed opioids and seeking to recoup what it costs to treat people addicted to the drugs.

But as public attention increases, the marketing tide may finally be retreating, a new ProPublica analysis shows. Pharmaceutical company payments to physicians related to opioid drugs decreased significantly in 2016 from the year before.

In 2016, drug makers spent $15.8 million to pay doctors for speaking, consulting, meals and travel related to opioid drugs. That was down 33 percent from $23.7 million in 2015 and is 21 percent less than the $19.9 million in spent in 2014. Companies are required to report the payments publicly under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, a part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

A number of studies have shown a correlation between marketing of opioids and doctors’ prescribing of the drugs. Hadland and his colleagues reported in May that for every meal a physician received related to an opioid product in 2014, there was an increase in opioid claims by that doctor for Medicare patients the following year. And a report from the New York State Health Foundation published this month found that physicians who received payments from opioid makers prescribed more opioids to Medicare patients than doctors who didn’t receive the payments.

The sharp drop in marketing is more pronounced than the much slower reduction in the use of prescription opioids. The number of opioid prescriptions in Medicare, the public health program for seniors and the disabled, peaked at 81.7 million in 2014, and then dropped to 80.2 million in 2015 and 79.5 million in 2016, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Enrollment in Medicare’s prescription drug program continued to grow during that time, so the rate of opioid prescriptions per beneficiary dropped even more.)

Still, the toll of opioid overdoses continues to grow. Some 42,000 people died of opioid overdoses in 2016, the most recent year available, and about 40 percent of those involved a prescription opioid. The epidemic has shifted somewhat away from prescription drugs as more people die of heroin and synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

Purdue Pharma, which has received the most attention because of its one-time blockbuster OxyContin, has ratcheted back its spending on doctors, especially for programs in which doctors talk to their peers over lunch or dinner to help companies market their products. Purdue ended its speaker program for OxyContin at the end of 2016 and for Hysingla ER in November 2017. Earlier this year, it ended all direct promotion of its opioids to prescribers and last week, the company laid off its remaining sales representatives.

Purdue spokesman Robert Josephson said in an email that payments to doctors related to opioids have decreased since 2016 and that there would be very little such spending in 2018.

”Pharmaceutical manufacturers are legally permitted in the U.S. to promote all FDA-approved products to physicians in accordance with the subject product’s label,” Endo said in a statement. “This includes opioid products, which are safely used by millions of Americans to improve their quality of life.”

That said, Endo said it stopped promoting Opana ER in the United States in January 2017 before voluntarily withdrawing the drug in September. “Today, Endo does not promote any opioid products to U.S. physicians,” the company said in a statement.

#Opioides #Marketing #Pharmacie

The #Opioid Timebomb: The #Sackler family and how their painkiller fortune helps bankroll London arts | London Evening Standard
▻https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/the-opioid-timebomb-the-sackler-family-and-how-their-painkiller-fortune-

We sent all 33 non-profits the same key questions including: will they rename their public space (as some organisations have done when issues arose regarding former benefactors)? And will they accept future Sackler philanthropy?

About half the respondents, including the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery, where Dame Theresa Sackler is respectively an honorary director and a patron, declined to answer either question.

Of the rest, none said it planned to erase the Sackler name from its public space. The organisations’ positions were more guarded on future donations.

Only the V&A, Oxford University, the Royal Court Theatre and the National Maritime Museum said outright that they were open to future Sackler grants.

The V&A said: “The Sackler family continue to be a valuable donor to the V&A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

Millions for London: Where Sackler money has gone
MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

Serpentine Galleries

Grants received/pledged: £5,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Tate

Grants received/pledged: £4,650,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery, Sackler Escalators, Sackler Octagon
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £3,491,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Arts Education
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

V&A Museum

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Courtyard
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

The Design Museum

Grants received/pledged: £1,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Library and Archive
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

Natural History Museum

Grants received/pledged: £1,255,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

National Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £1,050,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Room (Room 34)
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

National Portrait Gallery

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Pledged grant still being vetted
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Being vetted. Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Garden Museum

Grants received/pledged: £850,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Garden
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

National Maritime Museum

Grants received/pledged: £230,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowships
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

Museum of London

Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Hall
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Royal Academy of Arts

Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Wing, Sackler Sculpture Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

THE PERFORMING ARTS

Old Vic

Grants received/pledged: £2,817,000
Used to fund (among other things): Productions and projects
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Opera House

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

National Theatre

Grants received/pledged: £2,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Pavilion
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Shakespeare’s Globe

Grants received/pledged: £1,660,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Studios
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Court Theatre

Grants received/pledged: £360,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Trust Trainee Scheme
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

UNIVERSITIES/RESEARCH

University of Oxford

Grants received/pledged: £11,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Bodleian Sackler Library, Keeper of Antiquities
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

University of Sussex

Grants received/pledged: £8,400,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

King’s College, London

Grants received/pledged: £6,950,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Francis Crick Institute

Grants received/pledged: £5,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): One-off funds raised via CRUK to help build the Crick
Will you accept future Sackler grants? N/A

UCL

Grants received/pledged: £2,654,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Musculo-Skeletal Research
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Royal College of Art

Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Building
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Grants received/pledged: £1,170,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowship, Sackler Lecture Series
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Ballet School

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Imperial College London

Grants received/pledged: £618,000
Used to fund (among other things): Knee research
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Old Royal Naval College

Grants received/pledged: £500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

OTHER

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Grants received/pledged: £3,100,000
Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Crossing footbridge
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Moorfields Eye Hospital

Grants received/pledged: £3,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): New eye centre (pledged only)
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

The London Library

Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
Used to fund (among other things): The Sackler Study
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

The Prince’s Trust

Grants received/pledged: £775,000
Used to fund (among other things): Programmes for disadvantaged youth
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

Westminster Abbey

Grants received/pledged: £500,000
Used to fund (among other things): Restoration of Henry VII Chapel
Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

Royal Hospital for Neurodisability

Grants received/pledged: £350,000
Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

cc @hlc