University still paying online tribute to Oxy donor
Scots universities that accepted donations from US billionaires whose drugs company fuelled America’s opioid catastrophe have been urged to sever all ties.
The Sacklers made an estimated $8 billion from the addictive painkiller OxyContin, which was unlawfully marketed in the US as safer than alternatives, but has been linked to half a million overdose deaths.
And new TV drama, Dopesick, made by Disney and starring Michael Keaton, details how the family firm Purdue ruthlessly pushed the painkiller into the US healthcare system while the Sacklers donated millions to art and academic good causes around the world, including Scotland.
Brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler travelled from the US in the 1930s to study at Anderson’s College of Medicine, an institution that became part of the University of Glasgow in 1947. The university removed the Sackler name from a research facility at the neurosciences building at the flagship Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in June after The Post revealed concern at NHS Scotland honouring a family linked to a public health disaster.
However, the university still has a glowing tribute to Mortimer Sackler, who died in 2010, on its website hailing his honorary degree awarded in 2001 for providing financial support as part of the institution’s 550th anniversary celebrations.
Edinburgh University has also accepted large donations from the Sacklers and named a research unit after them. The Sackler Centre for Developmental Psychobiology’s page on the university website was taken down in June but references to the facility remain online.
University of Glasgow said: “We have received donations from the Sackler family trusts and those gifts have funded facilities and programmes that have changed and saved lives. In 2019 the Sackler grant giving programmes were suspended. We respect that decision and will not be applying for any further grants.”
Edinburgh University said: “We have received no funding from the Sackler Trust in over two years.”
The V&A in Dundee has also taken funds from the Sacklers and the name is among other donors on the art gallery’s entrance hall wall. V&A Dundee did not respond to requests for comment.