The Journalist and the Pharma Bro
elle.com
elle.com
Tired: Shame.
Wired: Fame
Which is subsidized by the customers of insurance companies that do pay the 56x markup, which are funded by the employers and individuals who pay for private insurance or tax dollars that pay for medicare. There's no free lunch.
Legally, it was above board, and financially, it was sensible regulatory arbitrage. Morally, though, it was reprehensible.
IIRC this program grants advertising exclusivity (weaker than patent exclusivity) as a carrot to give companies "IP protection-lite" in exchange for re-testing old drugs under the FDA phase flow.
Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
Also, funnily enough, in an actual capitalist environment you couldn't do this, because a competitor would immediately undercut you. However, the drugs market is heavily regulated, and Skhreli exploited the fact that it would take years and cost a lot of money for any putative competitor to get a generic version through FDA approvals.
As noted, this was all legal and I agree that he was railroaded to jail for essentially completely unrelated wrongdoings, but there's no universe where he's not a scumbag.
Focus on developing products to treat rare diseases characterized by severe unmet medical needs.
I also see several preclinical programs and product candidates. You must have missed those. Odd case, very strange.
It's more than that, the FDA grants advertising exclusivity, which is de jure weaker than patents (the patent office and the law regulates patent criteria, the FDA cannot) but is de facto just as effective, and is an IP lock on the product. (I would also call this "not really free market capitalism")
Sociopaths often do small goods to whitewash their ills. Saying that any action Shrkeli might take is ok because some other purported endeavor is designed to help people is a perfect example. To say that the only way to get money for medical research is to exploit society and its regulatory environment, sounds to me like a bad faith argument, since it's so easy to come up with counter examples (VC, public grants, prior profits from normal development/sales cycles).
Besides, Shrkeli is in prison for securities fraud unrelated to his pharma shenanigans, so how does that work when he's actually a terrific person?
He spent a tiny portion of his earned wealth to honor and support the Arts--in particular he supported struggling African American rap artists with a long history of strong performance and depth. Shkreli is a bona fide Rennaissance man, and I certainly do not hold this gesture against him. I am tempted even to call it charity.
> Besides, Shrkeli is in prison for securities fraud unrelated to his pharma shenanigans, so how does that work when he's actually a terrific person?
His "financial crimes" are nearly universally acknowledged even in this thread to have been contrived by his political enemies in retaliation for his more famous antics which were unambiguously legal. The case they brought against him was an absolute joke, and he would have been acquitted of all eight charges (instead of just five!) if he had been given a fair trial. Then, to further make the crooked lawfare obvious, they absolutely slammed him at sentencing with an outrageous ruling that departed dramatically from federal guidelines and rulings in similar cases, including those involving his "co-conspirators"! It was an unambiguous "f_ck you" to an American hero who deserves nothing but respect and admiration. He rose into wealth and prominence in a highly technical field despite coming from virtually nothing by the force of sheer talent and motivation, and the established powers that be were really rubbed the wrong way. This is all yet another sad case of feelings of inferiority by bug-souled racists clashing with pvre Albanian Excellence.
Because these scams have been going on forever. They're built into the system by the parasitizers whom it protects. It's "the way things work". If you catch onto the grift, if you even come close to it as an outsider, that's when they start making trouble for you. That's what happened with Shkreli. Send him to prison on some unrelated charge, drag him through the mud, then celebrate the defeat of your "villain". And totally miss the point. You changed nothing. You took out a scapegoat for people who are effectively real life caricatures of the imaginary villain they built up for you to strike down. You don't have a problem with Shkreli, you have a problem with our clown-world healthcare system. The real world doesn't run on warm sentiments you for whatever reason don't associate with Shkreli's face. It runs on THE RULE OF LAW, and you haven't even engaged it except in some contorted vengeful fashion against a wholly lawful (and might I say lofty-spirited) young man. Shkreli should be living free right now, and your complaints should be directed to your legislator.
He's 37.
He committed the worst sin in Corporate America - he told the truth. And he exposed the underbelly of the American pharmaceutical system. And someone had to go down for both of those things, and it sure as shit wasn't going to the CEO of the larger, far more powerful pharmas.
This guy might be a dickhead, but last I checked, being a dickhead isn't a crime; and speaking of crime, the shit they trumped up for him was shit that gets done a hundred times a year, at far larger scale, with much worse consequences than what he did. And what was the end result of Martin's actions, once the dust settled? He made a profit for his investors.
Its a fucking disgrace, is what it is. This is why the American people have no faith left, because every goddamned institution has been co-opted by money, and where at least in the past, they had the good fucking grace to deny it and keep it hidden, now they blatantly flaunt it, because they know that not only can you not do anything about it, you're too fat and happy to bother risking anything yourself.
Nothing will change until half this country is starving in the street. And even then, I doubt anything'll change.
I for one am absolutely appalled by the virulent anti-Albanianism which has somehow taken root in my HackerNews. It is my earnest hope and prayer that we may open our hearts and minds to these oft victimized people and understand their storied history and potential. All peoples are capable of great beauty and accomplishment - including Albanians - and it strikes me deep in my soul to witness the unjust downfall of such an exemplary young man who had risen above hardship and disadvantage to build something so great. In my mind there is nothing more responsible for the unearned hostility he has suffered than brutish prejudice, and I hope he still has time to complete his grand visions for a future with fewer life-threatening illnesses threatening humanity despite these unfortunate setbacks.
Hacker to hacker, stay strong Shkreli, my brother. We support you.
It means they lack empathy, disregard the feelings of others and often lie, break laws/rules and generally act impulsively. The exact description her own brother gave of her.
Genuinely curious, because I’ve only seen various viral clips, but don’t know the extent of what he actually did to land such notoriety.
As someone actively on the side of trying to figure out how to manufacture cheaper drugs, I have a lot of respect for him for being vocal (if in a self-serving juvenile fashion) about how the patenting and fda orphan drug system is broken and captured by industry. I can only imagine he was kind of pulling the same trick with the SEC, but miscalculated as he had burned all of his political capital on the pharma shenanigans.
It's that it wasn't -his- drug. His company had the market-leading alternative.
So he lobbied against approving safer medicine because it would cost him profit.
Besides, IMHO, we'd all be better off if more people were more informed about, and attuned to the symptoms of, narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy. Narcissists thrive by blending into society as if they were normally functioning humans, being given the benefit of the doubt, so the only way to protect yourself or others is to be on alert at all times, regardless of your clinical degrees.
Also props to Skreli for tarnishing the brand of bad things. It's so exhausting trying to convince people that e.g. philanthropy is bad, but then here comes perfect capitalist boogieman.
Basically if you have a complete faith that the government always knows best, then anyone else (an individual, a charity, a business, a volunteer organization, etc) spending their time or money to solve a problem is a bad thing, because the money should have been controlled by the government so they could allocate it as they saw fit.
A pox upon both their houses
Is there anything in my above comment you actually disagree with? It seems like you're just advocating for 100% socialism where individuals don't have private assets.
Suppose you have $100. You go to the grocery store and have lots of choices, you can buy basic groceries to feed yourself for the week for $50 and then give $50 to research to a rare disease which impacted a family member, or you can spend the full $100 at the grocery store buying brand name prepared foods. Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to make the choice between those? Are you saying the first person is doing something bad by giving their money to medical research instead of spending it?
Exactly.
> Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to make the choice between those?
No, but if they have "extra money", the most moral thing to do is not choose the good cause, but contribute it to the general charity fund to be democratically disbursed.
> Are you saying the first person is doing something bad by giving their money to medical research instead of spending it?
No, I'm not arguing the relative merits of mosquito nets vs Gucchi bags. If you think this is a such a 1 dimensional optimization problem with 0 externalities or higher order effects, we're not going to have a very productive conversation.
Look at the current covid stimulus bill in the US as an example of how money gets allocated under a "democratically disbursed" system. Depending on where and when in human history you go, the majority opinion might have been "kill all the X people" or "do Z because God commands it".
Basically, "the most moral thing to do" is completely unrelated to "what the government will do" even if that government is democratically elected.