Do we like S. Daniel Abraham?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Decades of peace work and big giving, and nothing harmful found, but a serious accusation was still before the court when he died and we can't see how it ended.
Nothing new on him lately: S. Daniel Abraham died on 29 June 2025, aged 100, and we found no 2026 news about him. He was born in Long Beach, New York, in 1924, raised in an Orthodox Jewish home on Long Island, and served as a US Army infantryman in the 1940s. He later recalled living in foxholes and seeing his buddies get killed.
The money came from a small drug firm, Thompson Medical, which his family bought in 1947 for about $5,000. It grew into Dexatrim and then Slim-Fast, the 1980s shake-and-skim-milk diet craze. He sold Slim-Fast to Unilever in 2000 for $2.3 billion. Dietitians did question how sugary the shakes were, so he was no health saint.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty in his own words or acts. Nothing came up on trans or LGBTQ+ issues, climate or vaccines either way, so that part of the record is thin. His political money went to Democratic causes, including a reported $3 million to a super PAC backing Hillary Clinton in 2016. He also backed V15, an Israeli campaign that tried to unseat Netanyahu, and he said he wanted Israel to have the best prime minister it could. Where you land on that depends on your view of Israeli politics.
The peace work is the real stuff. Between 1988 and 2002 he made more than 60 Middle East trips with Utah Congressman Wayne Owens, meeting Israeli and Arab leaders. In 1989 they founded the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, which favoured a two-state solution. He argued that the only threat to Israel is demography.
He also gave big to health and education. His gifts include the Mayo Clinic's Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center, endowed chairs at Harvard Medical School and Princeton, programs at Yeshiva University including one at Stern College for Women, and a business school at Bar-Ilan University.
Now the stain. In December 2023 a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court alleged he sexually assaulted and harassed the plaintiff, who had worked for him. It was filed under New York's Adult Survivors Act. The Boston Globe reported he had moved to dismiss, and the judge hadn't ruled by the time of his death. We couldn't find how the case ended, so it's an allegation, not a finding.