U Buffalo’s generous donor

Gives each of his salesmen a boner.

One dancer exotic

For every narcotic

That you sell for the company’s owner.

Seven hundred million dollars over the last ten years in personal compensation! Not bad. This guy makes the Sacklers look like chumps. And all on the backs of poor slobs in West Virginia who took his drugs and destroyed themselves and their worlds. And now the CEO of the most disgusting opioid distributor in the world (“In 2006 and 2007 … McKesson Corp … shipped more than 5.66 million opioid pills to a single pharmacy in a tiny town in rural West Virginia, according to a scathing congressional report released last month.”) has decided that with the eyes of the courts upon his business methods the time is absolutely right to retire.

Time to explore other ways he can make a contribution to society.

— because they’re never too young!

Corey O’Hern, director of Undergraduate Programs for the Sackler Institute and a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, emphasized the importance of the Institute in fostering collaboration between departments at Yale. According to O’Hern, there is a lack of grants supporting such research on the national level. “The funding, independent where it’s from, has been crucial to developing this interdisciplinary research and training,” said O’Hern. “The thought of it going away is scary, stressful and sad.”

Corey? Do you know what Yale’s currently hoarding in its endowment? Do you know that your university sits on thirty billion dollars? If you don’t realize that Yale doesn’t need Sackler money, I find that scary, stressful and sad. Just ask Andrew Kolodny:

Despite benefits from the Sackler Institute, Kolodny maintained that Yale has a moral impetus to rename the program. “Yale University, if they are taking money from the Sacklers, they are taking blood money,” Kolodny argued. “That money came from the marketing of the Sackler family’s activities which led to millions of people becoming addicted and thousands of people dying.”

“I think Yale University can afford to give the Sacklers back their money,” he added.

‘… David Blight, a history professor and a member of the committee … said the Sackler program is just one of many potentially unsavory names at Yale. The renaming of Yale Commons as the Schwarzman Center following a donation from Stephen Schwarzman ’69, a private equity manager who served briefly on one of President Donald Trump’s business advisory councils, also spurred contention on campus this year. [UD wouldn’t take his name off a building for that reason; but surely Yale could find gross shit out about Schwarzman unrelated to Trump…]

“The reality is, as you know, this is how major universities function. Almost everything here has someone’s name on it,” said Blight. “My first reaction, I’m afraid, is skepticism, because behind great wealth there is always going to be an awkward story. Behind great wealth there will be a crooked path of some type, whether that wealth was made in fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, real estate or finance.”’

Yes, it’s icing on the cake that the guy’s name is Blight.

He doth speak the truth. Almost all the major moneybags – David Rockefeller comes to mind as one of the highest-profile, at Harvard – are unsavory, and plenty of them go beyond that, well in the direction of Sackler criminality. I mean, Steven Cohen? Pretty much anyone at Yeshiva University? Don’t get me started. Blight’s right that going down that road means noisy incessant sandblasting.

The Harvard Art Museums’ public relations office directed all Sackler-related questions to Patrick McKiernan, a spokesman for Harvard.

McKiernan said Harvard was “not interested in participating” and hung up the phone.

Trying the Haughty Hahvard approach … We’ll see how that goes …

For Andrew Kolodny, co-director of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Purdue’s wrongdoing is the Sacklers’ wrongdoing. As the inventors and owners of Purdue, the Sacklers deserve the “lion’s share” of the blame for America’s opioid crisis, he said.

He explained that the United States’ opioid epidemic is as severe as it is because the medical community began aggressively to prescribe opioids in the ’90s in response to what Kolodny deems a “brilliant marketing campaign” carried out by Purdue. He said the company has faced legal consequences for some of the specific ways in which it marketed OxyContin, but it was never punished for the “nonbranded marketing” they performed by persuading the medical community to feel more comfortable prescribing opioids.

U CONN DECLINES TO RETURN SACKLER FAMILY DONATIONS

AMID FUROR OVER OPIOID MANUFACTURER PURDUE PHARMA

“It’s a case about greed.”

***********************

As for the concurrent Sackler Family Values trial:

… Purdue executives determined — and recorded in secret internal correspondence — that doctors had the crucial misconception that OxyContin was weaker than morphine, which led them to prescribe OxyContin much more often, even as a substitute for Tylenol.

Hey! I coulda had a opiate!

… does his own vacuuming. Everyone was surprised, especially his tot!

… on his job.

UD quoted this University of Iowa student’s comment – to a policeman – in an earlier post (the policeman was trying to remind the fraternity member that in the wake of more than ordinary frat-carnage, Iowa fraternities weren’t allowed to put on private drinking events, even though some brazenly continue to do this) because it’s so pithy a summary of the fraternity/sorority situation at many American universities (“the party school is itself a business.”). As UD has often pointed out, the routine response of schools to routine death and near-death at their frats is temporary shut-down of this or that group, or totally ignored sanctions. This article looks at the problem in depth.

[UPDATE as the trial begins tomorrow:

Also on trial is Sunrise Lee, a former stripper who, as an Insys sales manager, enticed physicians into writing more prescriptions, prosecutors said. “Doctors really enjoyed spending time with her and found Sunrise to be a great listener,” another manager, Alec Burlakoff, told colleagues, according to court filings.]

Kapoor Hall, the fancy pharmacy school building at the University of Buffalo, was dedicated only a few years ago, with a big ol’ ribbon-cutting ceremony and all. John Kapoor himself was there to share his inspiring immigrant story, along with tips on how to run a profitable pharma concern with integrity.

Did UB have any inkling when it took his money that, this Monday, Kapoor’s trial, for “conspiring to pay doctors bribes and kickbacks that were disguised as fees for speaking events,” will put quite the spotlight on their decision to monumentalize him? Since Kapoor’s arrest (and the guilty pleas of several of his company’s executives; and the guilty pleas or upcoming trials of a number of bribed doctors — one of whom is a GW grad! This guy “ignored and bullied patients who resisted staying on the powerful pain-killing spray.”), the school has gone this way and that on whether to sandblast the name of a man who basically shoved for-cancer-pain-only fentanyl down the throats of thousands of people who came to their pusher-doctors complaining of sore knees and elbows. Some of those people are dead; quite a few are addicted; and far be it from UD to deny that this represents one logical and popular way to earn billions in the pharma trade… But the question before us is: Wouldn’t a little due diligence (given how relatively late in his criminal career UB did business with him) have spared Buffalo a good deal of trouble and embarrassment?

… will go down great with the president’s base, for whom it is one more sign of the oncoming apocalyptic Rapture.

ITALY’S PRIME MINISTER PROMISES

TO CHANGE ITALY IN TWO YEARS