greedy big pharma wannabe - Page 1

Slime balls such as martin shkreli need to be thrown in prison without parole....


http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84480391/
Shkreli, as it happens, was embroiled in a similar pricing controversy last year, when his former company, Retrophin, acquired rights to an old drug named Thiola, which is used to control a condition that produces incessant kidney stones in its sufferers. Retrophin jacked up the price from $1.50 per pill to more than $30. The increase in the annual treatment cost from about $2,700 to $54,750 for patients doomed to remain on the drug all their lives earned Shkreli a broadside from -- among others -- urologist Benjamin Davies of the University of Pittsburgh, who accused him of having "grabbed an old drug, made no changes to it at all, and hiked the price exorbitantly." Shkreli says that after he was ousted from Retrophin (the company is suing him for alleged self-dealing), its board discontinued efforts he had begun to provide financial support for researchers and patients. 

It's proper to examine whether the public is served by allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge whatever they choose for life-saving drugs, then deciding on their own whether patients warrant their sufferance and a lower price. That's especially true given that government money funds the initial research of many new drugs, which are then marketed at a profit by private corporations. 

More;

http://gawker.com/pharmaceutical-greed-villain-martin-shkreli-will-fight-1732104723
Given that Big Pharma executives are mostly visible monsters with fangs and horns, they usually avoid the spotlight. But after raising the cost of a life-saving pill by 5,000 percent, Turing CEO Martin Shkreli is loudly telling the world to fuck off.

Only a bad guy from Captain Planet could come up with a more brazenly amoral business scheme: Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased the rights to Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects tens of millions in the U.S. alone. Daraprim is particularly important for AIDS and cancer patients, whose weakened immune systems are ravaged by toxoplasmosis. Shkreli has now directly, intentionally switched the drug from affordable to insanely out of reach, Healio reports:

Since its acquisition, the price of pyrimethamine has increased from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet, according to IDSA and HIVMA. In an open letter to Turing, the organizations urged the pharmaceutical company to revise its pricing strategy for the generic medication.

“Under the current pricing structure, it is estimated that the annual cost of treatment for toxoplasmosis, for the pyrimethamine component alone, will be $336,000 for patients who weigh less than 60 kg and $634,500 for patients who weigh more than 60 kg,” they wrote. “This cost is unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population in need of this medication and unsustainable for the health care system.”
Shkreli isn’t just a regular, run-of-the-mill pharmaceutical industry monster. He’s a monster who used to work (of course) in finance, a former hedge funder accused of having tried to manipulate FDA regulations on drug companies whose stocks he was shorting. He was forced out of the last drug company he started, which is now suing him for $65 million. He’s also a probable charlatan who has claimed to have invented his own pharmaceuticals, despite his lack of any medical or scientific education.

(Shkreli is able to do price-gouge a generic drug by exploiting a few FDA loopholes that give companies exclusive licensing rights to certain older drugs, and allow them to deny other companies the access to those drugs needed to prove that a generic alternative is chemically identical.)

According to USA Today, Turing claims the proceeds of the now-exorbitantly priced toxoplasmosis drug will be used to research treatments and raise awareness for toxoplasmosis:

Rothenberg defended Daraprim’s price, saying that the company will use the money it makes from sales to further research treatments for toxoplasmosis. They also plan to invest in marketing and education tools to make people more aware of the disease.
This could also be phrased as “attempting to grow the size of the potential market for this suddenly much more profitable drug.”

Rather than hide and count his blood money, Shkreli is conducting a social media blitz. He spent much of last night bickering with John Carroll, a science writer who runs a pharma news website and has been critical of Shkreli for pulling a nearly identical price-gouging stunt at his last company.

Its sociopaths like this slime who are standing between surviving an illness and death...http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/21/martin-shkreli-is-big-pharma-s-biggest-asshole.html

And there are no laws against his abberant behavior....he is on par with mass murderers, and its legal.

Proof that many in Big Pharma do not care about human beings unless they have a profit attached to them.  May he need a drug that is either no longer available because it was not deemed super profitable or a drug that is so costly, his insurance will not cover it and he has to take other drugs that give him horrific side effects.

Horrible story for sure.

Curious, do you guys know the cost of getting a drug from concept to market and how many expensive concepts don't make it.

Who do you think carries the financial burden and risk.

Mindhunt you focus on one part, the negative part of the problem.

Tax payers need to consider their role in this.

Medicine is not manufactured by a lone geek with a few test tubes, this shit cost billions to produce and most drugs never get to market after private industry invests millions on a single potential product that never makes it.


The more we become dependent on science the more ignorant the public is on how science gets done, shit ain't free.


It is a miracle any pharma bothers to do research at all these days. They certainly target the lowest input drugs that will have the broadest market uptake, their is no incentive to go after really complex problems affecting a small market.

It is not even viable to research biotech alternatives to antibiotics, vaccines or even to keep antibiotics matched with new resistant strains.


When we get pandemics killing rich white people it will become lucrative again but the bodies will pile up for years because the research will have to start from scratch, nobody is funding that now.
 

Vk, I didn't read your wholepost, but in case you didn't see it in the article...the drug has been in existence since 1953! It has been working fine for 62 years! Same thing with the drug for kidney stones...it had been in existence for years. The research on those drugs has been long since paid for. You ask who do we think pays for the reasearch...tax payers, through government funding, that's who. We are not a bunch of dumb ideots who think drugs are just dropped from thin air. This prick is a predator and a parasite...most of big pharma is. Why do you think so many Americans go to other countries for cancer treatment and treatment for many other diseases...because the cost of medicine and drugs in the USA is insanely prohibitive. The cost of drugs is higher than any where else in the world. Even Cuba has more and better, affordable drugs and treatment than the USA.
Many drugs approved and affective in Canada, for example, are prohibited in this country because the drug companies can't make billions off them. Drug companies are in charge of what happens to us re medical care.

Yes VK4GSD, I do know what it takes to get drug to market in both time and money.  That does not excuse the above action.  Most of our medications in the US are at such an inflated price, the companies sell the exact same drugs in other countries at a more reasonable cost.  So tell me again how it is not about making money in the US?  Big Pharma is the #1 contributor to political campaigns and has the most lobbyists in the world.  The #2 is Big Oil and #3 is Big Tobacco.  Hmm wonder if that has anything to do with what Joanro said about many drugs not being sold in countries that have strict profit policies?  US is Big Pharma's dream, heck it is the dream for most companies because of the profit margin and the lax employee protections.

" It is a miracle any pharma bothers to do research at all these days."

Is this a problem in your country? Because there is research going on with breakthroughs in diseases like cancer, diabetes in countries other than the USA. Big pharma in the us doesn't have any incentive to cure diseases like cancer because the money for long term treatment is not something they are willing to give up....curing people of cancer is a loosing proposition for the drug the companies here. Same for any other long term disease they make billions on. Sick people are too profitable to give up with a cure. Other countries don't have that sick greedy attitude and are actively making progress towards cures for devastating diseases....the people living in the us won't benefit, unless they leave the us for treatment where it exists and is available for any human being to benefit from.

Joan big pharma want cancer to proliferate because it is within their financial interest??????

I would expect that from red sable not you.

Mind of course they are in it for the money, how ridiculous to think otherwise.

Pharma is a shareholder driven BUSINESS.

unless taxpayers are going to fund scientific research then it will always be nothing more than a business run by businessman for shareholder profit.

And yes Joan my country has always been a major innovator in science, not so much on the commercial manufacturing side tho and we are behind in tech start ups but medicine for sure.

And vk, do you really believe that the drug company in 1953 made more money researching and producing that parasiticide than drug companies get in funding today for any research...from grants to charities. 60 years ago there were people who were philanthropic and went into research because of the good for humanity and not because they could get billions out of insurance companies and gravely ill people. They made a living, they didn't become billionaires, (at the expense of gravely ill patients).