Last grandson of Flexner Report backer dead at 101

David Rockefeller, the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller and a man who wielded vast influence around the world, died on Monday in Pocantico Hills, New York. He was 101.

From The New York Times:

The youngest of six siblings, David Rockefeller was born in Manhattan on June 12, 1915. His father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., the only son of the oil titan, devoted his life to philanthropy. His mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was the daughter of Nelson Aldrich, a wealthy senator from Rhode Island.

Besides Nelson, born in 1908, the other children were Abby, who was born in 1903 and died in 1976 after leading a private life; John D. Rockefeller III, who was born in 1906 and immersed himself in philanthropy until his death in an automobile accident in 1978; Laurance, born in 1910, who was an environmentalist and died in 2004; and Winthrop, born in 1912, who was governor of Arkansas and died in 1973.

David, the youngest, grew up in a mansion at 10 West 54th Street, the largest private residence in the city at the time. It bustled with valets, parlor maids, nurses, and chambermaids. For dinner every night his father dressed in black tie and his mother in a formal gown. [1]

These were the spoils of the family that derailed natural medicine and built what became Big Pharma by usurping the teachings of medical schools in the wake of the Flexner Report.

John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company in 1870. His fortune made him the first billionaire in the United States.

In the early half of the 20th century, the petrochemical giants organized a coup on the medical research establishments, hospitals and universities. The Rockefellers did this by sponsoring research and donating monetary gifts to U.S. universities and medical schools where research was drug based and further extended this policy to foreign medical establishments via their International Education Board. Those who were not drug based were refused funding and were soon dissolved in favor of the more lucrative pharmaceutical-based projects. [2]

• The Flexner Report

The obituary of David Rockefeller noted, “As an octogenarian, Mr. Rockefeller, whose fortune was estimated in 2012 at $2.7 billion, increasingly devoted himself to philanthropy, donating tens of millions of dollars in particular to Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rockefeller University, which John D. Rockefeller Sr. founded in 1901.” [3]

However, many on social media did not cast a favorable light on David Rockefeller: