Long Before Opioids, How the Sackler’s Got Started

A 1956 story of Pharmaceutical Corruption

In 1956, Dr. Henry Welch was the chief of antibiotics at the FDA. He’d been awarded a Distinguished Service Gold Medal from the US for his development of a system of testing and approving penicillin during the war.

Dr. Welch was the keynote speaker at a conference, the Fourth Annual Symposium on Antibiotics. This event was co-sponsored by the FDA with all expenses paid by MD Publications. This company was run by a psychiatrist Felix Mari-Ibanez. It published two technical journals, Antibiotics and Chemotherapy and Antibiotic Medicine and Clinical Therapy. Dr. Welch co-edited these along with Marti-Ibanez.

At the conference, Welch in his speech said, “We are now in the third era of antibiotic therapy” and that “synergistic” antibiotics would be successful were traditional antibiotics weren’t.

This was basically the launch party for Pfizer’s new wonder drug, Sigmamycin. Pfizer advertised as the “Third era of antibiotics.” One ad read: “More and More Physicians Find Sigmamycin the Antibiotic Therapy of Choice”. This ad included business cards with eight names, addresses and phone numbers of physicians, touting it was “highly effective” and “clinically proved.”

John Lear was an investigative journalist and science editor at the Saturday Review. Lear tried contacting these doctors in the ad by mail and phone. His mail came back undeliverable. The phone numbers didn’t reach doctors. They were fake.

Pfizer’s own medical director found that 27% of people experienced side effects from Sigmamycin. Their promotions of the drug touted no side effects.

Lear would go on to discuss Dr. Welch about his connections. Welch said, “Where my income comes from is my own business” and that regarding MD Publications, “My only connection is as an editor, for which I receive an honorarium.”

But he was lying.

In a congressional investigation, a copywriter for Pfizer would go on to explain that Welch had submitted his speech ahead of the conference to approval from Pfizer. This copywriter punched it up specifically with talk of the “third era of antibiotics” which was the main claim they’d use in their advertising.

After the symposium, Pfizer purchased 238,000 reprints of Dr. Welch’s speech. As part of Welch’s deal, he received half the income from these reprints. While Pfizer gave a few of these out, most ended up in the garbage. It was simply a legal bribe.

Further investigation revealed the numbers. The FDA paid Welch a salary of $17,500 per year. And between 1953 and 1960 an average of $35892.75 was made from his publishing ventures. He made twice as much from his extra activities than his main job, so who do you think he was ultimately loyal too? Just an honorarium, ha!

When these numbers came out, Dr. Welch resigned in disgrace. He retired to Florida with his pension intact.

This was not an isolated incident. A drug examiner turned whistleblower named Barbara Moulton had spent five years at the FDA before she resigned in protest around that time. She said the agency “failed utterly” in policing the way drugs were marketed and sold. That the FDA bowed to those it regulated. She had even been reprimanded for not being “sufficiently polite to members of the pharmaceutical industry.”

The aforementioned ad for Pfizer was put out by an advertising agency owned by Dr. Arthur Sackler, the main man behind Pfizer’s advertisements, in fact most of those of various pharmaceutical companies. Sackler was also the financial backer for MD Publications.

Subpoenaed letters later revealed that Sackler and Welch communicated personally. That Welch asked for “a little outside help” in funding a new journal.

If the name Sackler sounds familiar to you, it is because of the headlines of the Sackler Family that owned Purdue Pharma, one of the major players in the opioid epidemic. Arthur Sackler was the patriarch, and the playbook they followed was started a long time ago. This story comes from Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Now reflect on this.

Is this same drug company involved in misleading advertising, overstating the benefits while downplaying the side effects?

Has the buying of reprints in medical journals legal bribery loophole ever been closed?

Are there people at the FDA resigning in protest even in the last couple of months?

Are there similar financial connections going on between a web of companies, individuals, and regulators?

Different decade, different people…

Same companies, same regulatory body, same tactics…

Unfortunately, the same story over and over again. That is until we all learn better.