NYU Langone to Remove Sackler Name From Biomedical Institute
The Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences will be renamed after Purdue Pharma pled guilty on federal criminal charges.
NYU Langone Medical Center will remove the family name Sackler from its biomedical institute after the Sackler’s company, Purdue Pharma, agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for marketing the addictive painkiller OxyContin.
“In view of yesterday’s U.S. Department of Justice announcement of the settlement of federal criminal charges with Purdue Pharma and the civil settlement with members of the Sackler family related to the marketing of Purdue’s opioid products,” NYU officials said in a written statement on Thursday. “NYU Langone Health will be removing the Sackler name from its Graduate Biomedical Institute, as well as other named programs.”
The Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences was named after the family in 1980 but the institute formally stopped accepting new donations from opioid manufacturers and Sackler-related entities last year, according to Washington Square News. The biomedical institute becomes the latest entity to remove the Sackler name after Tufts University became the first major institution to do so last year. The institute’s website still publicizes itself under the Sackler name. It is unclear when this name change will go into effect and what will the new name be.
NYU Langone’s decision to replace the institute's name based on criminal charges joins the growing list of NYU programs that have changed their names after their benefactors came under fire. Such was the case of NYU’s “William H. Cosby Future Filmmakers Workshop,” which dropped the name Cosby after the actor was accused of raping 50 women.
The biomedical institute's name change decision faced opposition from the family’s lawyer, Daniel S. Connolly.
“As soon as Purdue documents are released they will show the company’s history and that members of the Sackler family who served on the board of directors always acted ethically and lawfully, so it is disappointing that NYU is rushing to judgment,” Connolly said.
Purdue Pharma is expected to pay nearly $8 million in penalties for its role in the opioid epidemic that has killed more than 450,000 people since 1999.
