Mortimer Sackler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mortimer David Sackler (* 7. December 1916 in New York City , United States ; † 24. March 2010 in Gstaad , Switzerland ) was an American entrepreneur who with his brother Raymond Sackler for the marketing of the drug Oxycontin and cultural sponsorship was known .

Life

The son of the Jewish immigrants Isaac and Sophie Sackler, b. Greenberg, went to school in Brooklyn. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he said he was unable to study medicine because of the restrictions on admission to Jews and therefore traveled to Great Britain in 1937. There he studied until 1939 at Anderson College of Medicine, which has belonged to the University of Glasgow since 1947 . In 1944 he earned a doctorate in medicine from Middlesex University in Massachusetts. He then worked in New York, first as an assistant doctor at Harlem Hospital (1944/45), then at Creedmoor State Hospital (1945/46, 1948–1953) and Rockaway Beach Hospital (1946/47). From 1950 to 1953 he worked at the Creedmoor Institute for Psycho-Biologic Studies.

Together with his brother Raymond Sackler , Mortimer Sackler took over the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma in 1952 . This investment made the two brothers extremely wealthy. In 1995, Raymond and Mortimer started marketing the blockbuster drug Oxycontin , an opioid based on the active ingredient oxycodone . For a long time it was one of the top-selling drugs in the world. Purdue Pharma has come under fire on several occasions because the company did not adequately point out the risk of addiction from taking Oxycontins. The pharmaceutical company is now directly linked to the opioid epidemic in the United States of America . Together with his third wife Theresa Elizabeth Sackler, Sackler repeatedly acted as a patron by virtue of his fortune and donated among other things for the construction of the Sackler Library and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery . In 1981 Mortimer Sackler was made an honorary senator of the University of Salzburg . In 1995, Sackler was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). In 2002, Theresa Sackler secured the naming rights to a rose variety from the English breeder David CH Austin , which is now called "Mortimer Sackler".

The artist and activist Nan Goldin , who had been dependent on pain medication for several years, carried out several protests against the Sackler family from 2018. In March 2019, several art museums announced that they would no longer accept donations from the heirs of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler due to the Sackler family's involvement in the opioid crisis. Museums that have declined large donations include the National Portrait Gallery , the Tate Galleries, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01sackler.html
  2. ↑ universitystory.gla.ac.uk: Mortimer Sackler / Biography accessed on March 12, 2019
  3. ^ Sackler, Mortimer D. In: American men of medicine: third edition of Who's important in medicine. Institute for Research in Biography, Farmingdale 1961.
  4. ^ A b Joanna Walters: "Meet the Sacklers: the family feuding over blame for the opioid crisis" The Guardian of February 13, 2018
  5. ^ Financial Times: What next for the Sacklers? A pharma dynasty under siege accessed on September 26, 2018
  6. ↑ Zeit Online: Die Pillendreher accessed on September 26, 2018
  7. ↑ davidaustinroses.com: Mortimer Sackler accessed on September 26, 2018
  8. ↑ Photographer on US opioid crisis "We live in dangerous times". In: taz.de. July 9, 2019, accessed August 29, 2019 .
  9. ↑ faz.net: Museums no longer want the Sacklers' money accessed on March 31, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Sackler, Mortimer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sackler, Mortimer David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and patron
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , United States
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 2010
Place of death Gstaad , Switzerland