‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli gouged kids with kidney disease before ripping off AIDS patients

[babylonsister]

‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli gouged kids with kidney disease before ripping off AIDS patients
David Ferguson
22 Sep 2015 at 15:08 ET


The former hedge funder who bought the rights to a lifesaving anti-toxoplasmosis drug, then jacked the price up 5,500 percent has executed this money-making maneuver before with a medicine for adults and children with kidney disease.

Jeremy Stahl at Slate.com wrote on Tuesday that when Martin Shkreli was the CEO of Retrophin — a pharmaceutical firm that is now suing him for $65 million — he bought the rights to a “decades-old” kidney medication in 2014 and raised the price to more than 20 times its original cost.

Retrophin bought the rights to the medication Thiola — which was approved by the FDA in 1988 — and raised the cost from $1 per pill to $30 per pill.

Thiola is used in treatment of the chronic disease cystinuria, a condition that causes patients to constantly form and excrete kidney stones. Patients are typically diagnosed at a young age. Their urine contains high amounts of the amino acid cystine, which crystalizes in the kidneys and travels — often agonizingly — through the bladder and ureter.

There are around 20,000 patients currently in the U.S., many of whom are children. There is no known cure for cystinuria, but Thiola is used along with diet and other life modifications to prevent the kidney stones from forming.

When Retrophin bought Thiola, the annual cost for patients zoomed from $54,750 to $109,500. Steve Brozak wrote in Forbes that Shkreli and his company are “turning patients into commodities like barrels of oil.”

more...

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-gouged-kids-with-kidney-disease-before-ripping-off-aids-patients/

[woodsprite]

1. He's a rat. Reminds me of Peter Petigrew in the Harry Potter movies...

[w0nderer]

2. If he does it multiple times

that's called, in the 'ultra capitalist free trade world', a 'successful business model'

'Charging what the market won't bear' is more like it


For the sarcasm impaired, there was some in this post.

[cwydro]

3. Filth.

Period.

[ion_theory]

4. I'm a hematology-oncology RN who works for a private practice...

I am also our nurse coordinator and am responsible for ordering our drugs, mainly chemotherapy and other anti-neoplastics. I'm amazed at the weekly fluctuations of the same drugs every...single...week. It's not unusual to see the same drug jump $200-$300, just because it's 'what the market can bare.' In other words, it's how much $ the insouciant insurance companies are willing to reimburse us for that particular drug. Obviously we live in a capitalistic society and almost everything is affected by it. However, there are parts of our society (treatment for cancer patients that give them another year or 2) that should be kept completely separate from these vultures. It's some shameful shit going on behind the scenes and I hope I'm alive one day to see it change.

[hifiguy]

5. Where is a falling piano - ala Looney Tunes -

when one is so desperately needed. This guy deserves the Mussolini/Ceaucescu treatment, like yesterday.

This pathetic piece of human sewage may replace even Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon as the public face of vulture capitalism.

[AngryAmish]

6. Not exactly a "bro"

Skinny asshole.

[napkinz]

7. that smirk!

[hifiguy]

8. The Ferengi walk among us.

Jebus, what a punchable face.

[napkinz]

9. he has a future in politics ... (something about that smirk)

[smirkymonkey]

10. So. Hate. This. Guy.