$VTL #GDFR pic.twitter.com/FlZu2N68sy
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) August 12, 2015
This jackass is getting 15 minutes of fame he probably shouldn’t want, but seems to like anyway:
Martin Shkreli (above) is a former hedge fund manager and the current CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. In August Shkreli bought a drug called Daraprim. It’s been around for 62 years and is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a life-threatening parasitic infection. “Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” reports the New York Times.
It’s fun to single out Shkreli for his questionable ethics, but plenty of other pharmaceutical companies also jack up the the price of formerly cheap drugs to levels that will bankrupt people who need them. The antibiotic Doxycycline was $20 a bottle in 2013. Today, the same bottle costs $1,849. Cycloserine, a tuberculosis treatment, used to cost $500 for a 30 pill bottle, until Rodelis Therapeutics acquired the drug and increased the price to $10,800.
Clinton commented on this first class douchebag’s practices and said she was developing a plan to deal with bullshit like this, and Biotech stocks crashed.
I have a solution but I probably shouldn’t say it in public.
JPL
In good news, the guy who sold tainted peanuts and killed 9 people was sentenced to 28 years in jail. When was the last time that a business owner was sentenced to jail?
Botsplainer
My solution would be a bullet in his forehead as a warning to other hedgies.
It isn’t like it would be any loss.
Gravenstone
It’s a shame stocks and pillories ever went out of style. Locking this waste of human skin into one, then selling rotted veg and fruit for $ 0.10 a toss would still make a mint.
schrodinger's cat
Hedge fund investing is nothing but high stakes gambling where anything and everything is fair game.
raven
With a dull deer antler.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: How have you been? How are things on the home front?
Splitting Image
I’ll say it. Make them dig their own graves and shoot them. This is what they guillotined the French aristocracy for. The landowners didn’t think they were responsible for growing enough food on said land to feed everybody.
-or-
They could accept a certain amount of price regulation as the cost of doing business.
JPL
Most antibiotics are ineffective for my son. During the anthrax crisis, he was prescribed cipro. At the time he was still living at home and before he left the pharmacy, I had a phone call from his credit card company. He had called me to mention how much the drug called, so I laughed when they called. That was a good thing, cuz the FBI didn’t show up. He has also had Doxycycline prescribed. All I have to say is he’s pretty healthy and doesn’t need these drugs often, but I pity the folks that do.
Warren Terra
I don’t get how this is possible. I understand the mechanism with Daraprim: there’s a tiny number of customers, and one producer, so even if the drug is out of patent (surely it is, after 6 decades?) it would cost any other company too much to start making it; Shrekli can basically set the price at whatever inflated level he wants, knowing that any other company wanting to compete on price would spend too much starting up production, especially as Shrekli can lower the price 50-fold again if he wants to, bankrupting such a competitor.
But Doxycycline? I mean, I’m no doc and I don’t know how commonly it’s used – but I’ve heard of it, suggesting it’s not all that uncommon. It’s fifty years old, so must be out of patent – given a (presumed) market of reasonable size, would there be only one producer, as is the case for Daraprim? Shouldn’t it be more possible for someone to compete on price?
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
I favor a slow woodchipper to turkeyburgerville.
JPL
Wow.. I can’t figure out why I’m in moderation..
Morzer
@Warren Terra:
I suspect the answer lies in the availability or not of generic replacements and import regulations.
Mike J
@Morzer: Give 4chan his home address.
JPL
@Morzer: I suspect the answer has to do with how many pills they sell.
beltane
@Warren Terra: Doxycycline was/is the standard treatment for Lyme disease.
Morzer
@JPL:
That wouldn’t be enough to create a captive market in itself, which is what this worthless trash is obviously gambling on. There has to be some effective bar to competitors entering the market – and with pharmaceuticals the big companies have worked very hard to shut out generics and/or imports, which is why I suspect that those “rules” are being exploited here.
mai naem mobile
The guy is such a lying SOS. He increased the price so that he could fund R&D for a new drug but its an orphan drug/disease. Douchebag.
jl
@Warren Terra: Start up sunk costs are high in drug industry, which includes those related to regulatory compliance, but also just related to economics of capacity.
For a small market, and modern scale of production, an entrant would know that any economically feasible scale of production would mean the incumbent and entrant together would have large excess capacity. So immediately, a price war down to the marginal costs of production. And then the entrant would have to eat the non-recoverable sunk start up costs.
Quicker and stream lined international trade in Rx drugs only thing I can think of that would help with this problem in a reasonable amount of time, unless we have a total change in regulation and industrial structure of US drug industry. There are at least a dozen countries around the world now with very robust and growing drug industries that can (technically, not sure about regulatory oversight) produce drugs similar in quality to US manufacturers.
Srv
I shorted the biotechs in your 401k.
Ha ha.
JPL
@Morzer: Buy inexpensive dr.ugs that are necessary and charge 1,000 more..
Free enterprise and all.
jo6pac
Yep, dead uncle milton freidman road show on the run.
raven
Zeke Emanuel said it was used for trichinosis but the google doesn’t say that.
MattF
He’s backed down.
redshirt
Sell drugs.
Make money.
Get bitches.
What’s to argue?
celticdragonchick
@Botsplainer:
I was thinking more long the lines of a Hellfire missile. If you want to make a statement, then make a fucking statement. An AGM-114 into his sports car will do that quite nicely.
Percysowner
@Warren Terra:
If you have a dog you may have heard of Doxcy. It’s used to treat kennel cough and it’s nowhere near that expensive for veterinary medicine, but that isn’t that unusual. I gave my cat Valium for a long time and it was dirt cheap. the exact same formula, but the prices are widely different.
Tracy Ratcliff
@MattF: No, that’s another sociopath profiteer, this one is toughing it out so far.
Renie
This is a perfect example of how the free market really works and why we NEED government regulations. These a$$holes will do anything for money even if it literally, kills people.
Schlemazel
I am starting a kickstarter to build guillotines. My idea is to develop a blade that that holds its edge through multiple uses and a roller track that will not bind ever.
Can I count on you guys to contribute?
Morzer
By the way, when we speak of doxycycline, it should be noted that this is lumping together several slightly different versions of the same thing.
This is quite an interesting piece on price spikes in various drugs:
http://truecostofhealthcare.net/generic_medication_prices/
JPL
ugh.. I’ve been in moderation hell. I have a son that needs ci pro or Doxy cyc line to treat infections. Fortunately, he is a healthy individual so seldom needs treatment.
greennotGreen
I have a bottle of doxycycline from when I was fostering dogs. Think I can sell it for the major bucks? /snark, but I do have a bottle.
Do people like Shrkeli not understand that making drugs outlandishly expensive can ruin people’s lives or maybe shorten their lives? Does he really not care?
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
I can design and build them. Need some money for startup costs but after that……
JPL
@greennotGreen: Money, money, money …
haha save it
greennotGreen
@Schlemazel: Sure, I’ll donate, but I don’t see why the blade needs to be all that sharp.
MattF
@Tracy Ratcliff: The problem is that it takes some effort to get the sociopaths right– but I suppose it’s worth the trouble. There’s just so many of them.
Baud
@greennotGreen: He really, truly does not.
Morzer
@Schlemazel:
Maybe we could call it a chopstarter, rather than a kickstarter.
Mike J
@beltane: I got amoxicillin. After one dose I felt better, 100% after 3 or 4 days (but yes, I take the entire30 days).
My PTLDS flared up (fever, aches) once a month for 10 years, and tapered off. Haven’t had an occurrence in several years now.
JPL
fyw[
jl
I see a comment I made above got moderated due to naughty words. I’ll try again.
Just a heard a news report that the company may back down on the pricing. If anyone hears more on it, please let me know in comments.
To broaden the point a bit, AFAIK, this has nothing to do, directly, with patents and licensing. It is about the narrowing of supply chain for drugs. Concentration in the US drug market, and barriers to international trade (which will NOT be addressed in things like the TPP) in drugs has produced an industry where only one plant manufactures many generic drugs, especially ones with small markets relative to things like blood pressure or statins.
Unexpected shortages are increasingly common for a variety of reasons, enough so that the topic of how to handle the potential for unexpected shortages for a random small market drug is entering the curriculum in medical and pharmacy schools.
I said the problem is not ‘directly’ related to patent and licensing, but I have to wonder whether it is indirectly related, via effect of historically extreme US IP law on mergers and acquisitions, and acceptable ROI in the industry.
Edit: reasons for shortages besides this kind of buy-out scam include accidents at plants, manufacturing problems. One particularly infuriating one is that only one plant makes a drug, but in a plant that makes several drugs. So, say the price drops for one drug in the plant’s manufacturing portfolio forces the plant’s profit margin to unacceptably low levels. Whole plant shuts down, and production of every drug stops.
greennotGreen
@Morzer: Hee hee!
beltane
@Mike J: I’m allergic to amoxicillin.
jl
reasons for shortages besides this kind of buy-out scam include accidents at plants, manufacturing problems. One particularly infuriating one is that only one plant makes a drug, but in a plant that makes several drugs. So, say the price drops for one drug in the plant’s manufacturing portfolio forces the plant’s profit margin to unacceptably low levels. Whole plant shuts down, and production of every drug stops.
Ruckus
@greennotGreen:
Good bet the answer is not one fucking little bit. He cares that he can live a life of luxury, doesn’t give a fuck that anyone else even lives. OK maybe his Ferrari or Bugatti dealer/mechanic. But there’s more than one of them so he’s good.
ETA Remember that he’s rich because he takes risks. Why should he care if you have to take a risk that the rare disease that you will probably kill you, that’s the risk you took in living.
JPL
For someone that commonly prescribed antibiotics don’t work, this practice is dangerous.
Botsplainer
@schrodinger’s cat:
Better. Much better, thanks.
Schlemazel
@greennotGreen: speed! Needs to be sharp so we can move the line along at a good clip.
@Ruckus:
I have some design improvements in mind, need to figure out how much seed money is needed. Maybe we could parto,I’ll play Jobs to your Woz if you like – I already had cancer so we got that out of the way
Schlemazel
@Morzer:
I like the way you think, maybe you could do marketing?
BruceFromOhio
INVISIBLE HAND BITCHEZ
Gian
@JPL:
I heard that story on NPR on the way home, and they were just shocked that a CEO who killed 9 people and sent some 700 to the hospital would have so much jail time to do, and he was remorseful and everything. Meanwhile, I’d wager the families of the people he killed think 28 years maybe a little low.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Just interested in leaving the world a better place, one sociopath at a time.
Howard Beale IV
You can thank the Medicare Part D. This same drug is just a buck and change in Canada.
Morzer
@Schlemazel:
I see myself more as providing hands-on heads-off solutions to personnel problems.
Gian
@greennotGreen:
no he doesn’t care, and he won’t care until he’s up against the wall when the revolution comes.
in all seriousness, I’d like to see it get eminent domained out of his hands, with the “just compensation” being precisely what he paid for it, leaving him to eat his costs in buying it.
jo6pac
I’m sure doj will step in and do the right thing. Oh sure:))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Ruckus
@Gian:
28 yrs x 7 = 196 yrs.
Now I know that wasn’t the sentence but it only seems fitting.
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
An excellent goal, worthy of a person of true decency and honor.
smintheus
Why is he wearing that ugly shirt?
goblue72
@Splitting Image: A Second Amendment solution sounds about right.
JPL
@Gian: He knew the peanuts were tainted. Some call it murder.
Schlemazel
@Gian:
Yes, the families may think that light but none of them will be donating thousands to NPR so they are wrong obviously.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
You seem to be a trifle, what’s the word – upset, miffed, motivated, pissed……..
As well you should be. We are living in a world gone mad with unfettered capitalism. Was talking to someone earlier about wealthy people, that today it’s not just be wealthy but to flaunt that wealth and the sociopathic way you ended up with it.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
Thanks!
Nicest thing anyone’s said about me in a long time.
Schlemazel
@Ruckus:
Yeah, that second paragraph is the rub. I don’t begrudge anyone their hard earned wealth but the crooks,liars,thieves and heirs pretending that they not only deserve wealth but deserve to grind you into the dirt while waving their undeserved excess in everyone’s face is too much to bear.
redshirt
The invisible hand’s visible fingers.
Mike J
@JPL:
And faked tests, just like VW.
Howard Beale IV
@jl: Hell, I can’t even recall the last time I ever had a US-manufactured drug dispend to me. Most of my medications have either been from Israel or India.
jl
@Howard Beale IV: Can take a long time to get approvals and licenses for that, especially if a company in US with lots of $$$ is against the idea.
JPL
I was in mod at comment 8 for a long time.. but now it’s released.. When the son, who now in his thirties, was in 8th grade, two doctors were discussing how to rid him of an infection. One wanted to go to the hospital IV only drug and the other wanted to cleanse his diet. The cleanse his diet meant prescription baby food. The son said, you know I’m in middle school right. We chose a diet without color and it worked. Obviously boring cuz there is only so much you can do with chicken and rice but it worked.
I hate these fuckers. I only wish they could be sent to jail like the peanut person because they are going to cause the same problems.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@MattF: Nope — the Times article you linked to talked about a whole other company doing the same thing with a whole other drug.* This douchebag is still douchebagging.
*Yep, more than one. Where’s that damned meteor already?
NCSteve
Yeah, we’re all thinking it: guillotines, tumbrels and bullet pocked walls.
schrodinger's cat
Is there any reason that hedge funds can’t do this with commodities?
Kate P
Doxycycline one of the drugs that has shot up in price is one of the most effective drugs for kennel cough in dogs. The dramatic price increase has hurt shelters everywhere.
Wag
@MattF:
No. That was a different douchbag with the same strategy on a different med. Cycloserine for Tb.
JPL
@Kate P: Although this sounds hateful, maybe that will help. Both sides love their pets.
Ken
Why not? The Saw and Hostel movies are a decade old, the Yoo memos about the same, 24 a little older. People are fine with torture. It’s what we Americans do.
Comrade Dread
If I were the merciless god of karma, I would have all of his assets seized except $20-30,000 a year and distributed to the poor, then I would afflict him with a disease (such as HIV) that requires constant drug treatment and see how he enjoys paying for it out of pocket on $30,000 a year with poor insurance.
PurpleGirl
@JPL: Nope. If they don’t care about the humans the increased prices hurt (and will potentially kill), they won’t care about dogs that will potentially be killed because shelter cough won’t be treated and cured. Yes, killed. Some kill-shelters will euthanize all the dogs if they can’t treat shelter cough.
(My cat rescuer in CT took in 37 kittens/cats from Alabama because they had been at a kill-shelter that was about to euthanize all their animals because dogs had shelter cough. The kittens/cats were transported north to CT, they were fine.)
schrodinger's cat
How is this legal?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@schrodinger’s cat: Because commodities are a completely different market. They don’t have single suppliers; they tend to have supplies that are too large for an individual to control sufficient amounts of to engage in these sorts of shenanigans; there is enough demand for them that new suppliers will step in if someone does try it; and most commodities have significant storage costs if you try to withhold them from the market.
Gin & Tonic
@Gian: The on-line first line of the NPR story on peanut guy is “A former corporate CEO has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling food that made people sick.”
Well, gee, it just made people sick. No, it fucking *killed* people.
I read that the son of one of the victims flew down to Atlanta from Minnesota just to be at the sentencing hearing, hoping against hope they’d give the dude life.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: Companies are gaming US patent law, or in this case, FDA licensing and marketing approval system. I think the problem ultimately stems from problems created by economies of scale in the drug manufacturing industry for drugs that do not have a market large enough to support multiple manufacturing plants, combined with perverse financial incentives created by the historically very extreme US IP and patent law, which has turned many industries with large patent portfolios into rentiers.
schrodinger's cat
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: You are talking of practical difficulties, what about legal difficulties. Say, some hedge fund wants to hoard something that is not perishable, copper, for example, would that be legal?
mclaren
schrodinger's cat
@jl: So in hedge fund manager speak, regulatory arbitrage?
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
He’s 61. 28 yrs makes him 89 if he serves his whole sentence and that’s pretty close to a life sentence. It isn’t good but it ain’t nothing. And the Guardian says it was 9 killed.
magurakurin
One of the more interesting things about this is the fact that the stocks tanked when Secretary Clinton announced she had a plan to stop this. Hmmm, it seems like market traders think she is going to be in a position to actually use that plan.
And she is, of course. The GOP is in full meltdown and Bernie Sanders, great guy that he is, isn’t going to win the primary. Not gonna happen. It’ll be Clinton vs. Trump. The other goopers are running for VP now.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@schrodinger’s cat: It’s not inherently illegal, though there are methods of doing so that are. It’s also so wildly impractical that it’s not worth much to make it illegal. Trying to corner the market in a commodity is a really good way to bankrupt yourself. The Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market in the 1970s, a vastly simpler market to try to corner than something like copper or oil, and succeeded only in losing a ton of money.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: You cannot resell drugs in the US, or market them for purposes not approved by the FDA, and drug manufacturers must meet expensive regulatory hurdles to begin manufacture, often including FDS license to produce the drug, which involves a certification that the generic to be manufactured is functionally identical to the original patented drug. So, in this case, it looks like the market is small enough to support only one producer, that producer had the FDA approvals and all licenses necessary for legal manufacture and marketing of the drug, and they sold all that to the hedge fund manager’s outfit.
Drugs are not like other products.
Unless the regulatory framework is changed to permit real competition in manufacturing and trade of generics, then for many drugs, the size of the market and contemporary economies of scale for manufacture for some drugs preclude any competition at all. So, until there is reform, production of these drugs should be handled like public utilities.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: See comment above. Companies are gaming rules for production of generics that made sense when economies of scale were not large enough to make only one producer of a drug feasible. Competition between producers, all holding needed marketing approvals and licenses would hold down the price. Now there are more and more drugs where economies of scale only support one manufacturer and the rationale for the regulatory system has broken down. IMHO.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
It’s also worth noting that the markets for pharmaceuticals for humans and for veterinary purposes are different. Veterinary medicines may work off of the same formula, but are held to very different quality control standards. It’s illegal to sell veterinary medicines for human consumption because they are more likely to be contaminated and more likely to have a different potency than what is described.
Gian
@Ruckus:
I’d give him 5 years if his prison diet is only Chinese made pet foods
John Revolta
My regular generic anti-convulsive meds recently went from 10 bucks a pop to 90 something. Nobody at the pharmacy had a clue about why. Now I’m just hoping that it stops there.
sm*t cl*de
Shkreli is currently living in Switzerland to avoid asset forfeiture.
John Revolta
Hmph. First time I ever got moderated. I guess I’ve finally arrived.
Good thing I didn’t say anything about how I love to play poke err at the cassy no.
Tehanu
The problem isn’t one evil, selfish, greedy, smug sociopath. The problem is the whole system. Having said that, I would look favorably upon:
1. Having the smarmy bastard drawn and quartered, and then having the pieces arrested and stuffed down a sewer.
Or 2, Sentencing him to a lifetime of changing bedpans and scrubbing toilets in a hospital, while wearing a big scarlet A for Asshole.
joel hanes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Say, some hedge fund wants to hoard something that is not perishable, copper, for example, would that be legal?
What you are talking about has the term of art “Cornering the market”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornering_the_market
Notable recent attempts in silver and copper failed
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/silver-thursday-hunt-brothers.asp
The raucous Depression-era card game “Pit” is based on players’ figurative attempts to corner the market on grain commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade.
In Catch 22, Milo corners the market on Egyptian long-staple cotton by the simple expedient of purchasing the entire years crop, on margin.
J R in WV
The Hunt boys came close to cornering the silver market. They ran the price up an order of magnitude, then they failed to make their target, and lost several billion dollars. Unfortunately, not all of their vast fortune, but a whole lot of it.
These drug lords, whether in Switzerland or Gay Paris, should be treated like French Aristocrats. Once a few of them have learned that bit of history, the rest will get the idea that killing people for profit is not a valid business proposition.
Maybe Hillary’s way is best, promise to regulate these monsters, as they have proven is necessary for the benefit of society. Then watch their stock price crater. Losing a ton of money is
probablycertainly more painful than physical death to these greedy blood-suckers.Drug lords are all the same, whether it is a monopoly in antibiotics or a vast pipeline full of cocaine. But some do more harm than others, the ones restricting the availability of a cure!
We need to fix the drug war, and point that mechanism at the correct enemies!
mclaren
The plan to deal with situations like this is single-payer nationalized health care.
What’s to stop any hospital or any doctor or any medical devicemaker or any pharmaceutical company from doing the same thing? Prescribe a band-aid, bill the insurance company $5000…why not? Give the patient an aspirin, bill ’em $100,000…why not? Perform an appendectomy, bill $5 million — what’s to stop them?
Only nationalized single-payer health care will stop this destructive insanity. Otherwise, the logical endpoint of for-profit health care is to charge a limitless amount — 10 million, 100 million, 5 billion, 1 trillion. Why not? What’s to stop it? The magic of the fucking market?
Please.
Joel
Honestly, it’s time to pirate the drug. Not exactly a difficult achievement. The system depends on compliance.
C.V. Danes
CEO yachts aren’t cheap.
low-tech cyclist
@NCSteve:
Nah, I’m thinking we should hang the b*st*rds by their nutsacks. Guillotines and firing squads are too damned quick for people who make life worse for other people, then profit off their misery.
Aleta
@Kate P: @Kate P: doxycycline is also what’s effective for getting the Lyme out of your system when it’s still at an early stage. Didn’t understand why some practitioners in my area were prescribing a smaller- than recommended dose of it this summer, or holding off until the test results, after an engorged tick, when a few years ago the opposite was recommended. Maybe this explains it. We have a kind that seems to go straight to the nervous system, maybe within a few days, and people get very messed up. Seems horrible to limit the use of doxycycline because of profit mongering.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Warren Terra: It’s very common and has been around for a long time. I was put on it in the mid-1980s to treat acne. According to Wikipedia it was developed in 1967 so it should no longer be under patent. I would think cheap generics would come on line from someone if the price is held as high as it reportedly is right now. There’s a lot of money to be made selling it at a fraction of that price.
PIGL
@Botsplainer: I’m right there with you, good buddy.
PIGL
@celticdragonchick: I like the way you think, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Or marry you.