‘We owe much to the Sackler family’: How gifts to a top medical school advanced the interests of Purdue Pharma

In 2009, a Tufts University School of Medicine professor named Dr. Daniel Carr took stock of the accomplishments of the pain program he had helped start a decade earlier.

Alumni of the master’s program included physicians, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists, he said in a post on the center’s blog. Faculty at the Pain Research, Education, and Policy program had advised policymakers and were at work on a book about pain treatment in a changing health care landscape. He also thanked the program’s donors, including the billionaire dynasty that made it possible.

“We owe much to the Sackler family, whose initial and ongoing support has been indispensable,” Carr said.

The Sackler family built and controls the privately held Purdue Pharma, the maker of opioid painkillers including OxyContin. A STAT review of court documents, two decades of academic papers, tax forms, and funding disclosures suggests that the family and company money that went to Tufts helped to advance their interests, generating goodwill for members of the family who were praised for their philanthropy and amplifying arguments about opioids that dovetailed with their business aims.

Tufts at times opened its doors to Purdue, allowing a high-ranking executive, Dr. David Haddox — who in 2003 said OxyContin was not addictive — to lecture in the pain program, granting him the title of adjunct associate professor of public health and community medicine at a premier medical school.

Read more: After three years of controversy, CDC clarifies its opioid prescribing guidelines

And as one of the founders of the pain program, and its current director, Carr was given a prominent platform from which to opine about opioid policy — in the classroom, in medical journals, in professional societies. Though his views have shifted, in 2001, he suggested that some patients be given strong opioids early in the course of treatment, minimized their risks, and questioned the cautiousness with which some clinicians were prescribing opioids. He has also taught continuing medical education courses for clinicians funded by Purdue.

Meanwhile, Carr’s prominence grew: In 2016, he served as president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine and with six governors about