by Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com
This time, ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli intends to hike the price of a drug used to treat Chagas disease, a parasitic infection that can cause potentially lethal heart problems.
When it comes to the most despised, Martin Shkreli is up there with Monsanto and the Rockefellers.
Earlier this year, the ‘Pharma Bro’ made headlines when he hiked the price of Daraprim, a decades-old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, by 5,000%.
After public outcry, Shkreli promised to lower the price of the drug which is heavily relied upon by some AIDS and cancer patients but later reneged on that vow.
Now, the greedy CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals is poised to put profits over people again. The New York Times reports that Shkreli is likely to increase the price of another decades-old drug used to treat Chagas disease, a parasitic infection that can cause potentially lethal heart problems.
Commented Dr. Sheba Meymandi, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of a Chagas treatment center at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center:
“It’s caused a lot of angst in the Chagas community. Everyone’s in an uproar.”
And for good reason. Shkreli is pissing off a number of organizations that supply drugs for neglected diseases with his plan to take advantage of a federal program that encourages companies to develop potentially life-saving pharmaceuticals.
The program was created by Congress in 2007 and awards vouchers that can be sold to other companies for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shkreli has purchased a majority share in KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, which allows him to apply for the exclusive right to sell benznidazole, which is used to treat Chagas in South America.
At present, the drug costs as little as $50 and as much as $100 for two months of treatment. It has never been approved for sale in the US but is provided free to patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an experimental basis.
If benznidazole gets the FDA’s approval, KaloBios will have exclusive rights to sell it in the United States for at least five years.
Shkreli’s plan is to hike its price similar to that of hepatitis C drugs, which cost $60,000 to nearly $100,000 for a course of treatment. That could be as much as a 99,900% increase in cost!
Between 3,000 and 7,000 people would require treatment for acute infection each year in the United States.
According to Dr. Meymandi, the astronomical price increase will be extremely problematic because “The people with Chagas, for the most part, are poor” and many lack insurance.
His intentions seem perfectly clear to those affected by the injustice.
“The only reason for him to do this is to get the voucher and turn around and sell it,” said Dr. Caryn Bern, a Chagas disease specialist at the University of California in San Fransisco.
Shkreli’s sick plan deserves to be exposed. If you agree, please share this article to raise awareness and comment your thoughts below.
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This is a great example of Abuse to Supply and Demand. The man needs to be stopped
What if hes secretly doing this to make that point? His plan is clearly ‘backfireing’ so bad its ending up forcing good people to finally act and start supplying medication to those who need it most. Like if he was really such a criminal mastermind hed only hike it up a few hundred percent to stay under the radar. Just what if hes not doing it out of greed but is just going about it in the only way he thinks people will listen? I understand thats probably all wrong but hey its a silver lining. the more drugs he does this to the more small groups will start doing the right thing or maybe even big groups to try and get ahead on the pr?
Too much optimism.
I hope you’re right and the man donates all the “hard-earned” money to charity, when he is done reforming the law.
It should be world n1 public enemy, karma will get him one day ,im a pacifist but I wish he gets a horrible disease and die like a dog, I would piss on his grave, scumbag that dont deserve the air that he breads.
greed is a terrible thing . he just does not know when he has enough or does he want to control population
all more the reason to reverse engineer the drugs he bought – and to made generics
He is only a pawn, he has sold his soul for fools gold.The wheel of Karma is turning.
Someone hack him and destroy this criminal.
in the title u said selfless instead of selfish
anonymous, please destroy this joker
Our insurance paid $22,500 for a month’s supply of Daraprin because of this piece of putrid puss. We were not informed by our doctor of how much the medicine cost, and it was ordered for us. When we saw how much it was, we told Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy ( who should be boycotted since they have the sole contract to facilitate this criminal act ) to not send us the next shipment. They did anyway, and we returned it and have spent months trying to get them to reimburse our insurance company ( we are very fortunate to have extremely good insurance ). Now, a compounding pharmacy in California is selling the same pill for less than $1 instead of the $750 that Shkreli is demanding. Turing Pharmaceuticals had a really bad quarter because of this walking bag of filth. If he walks into your store, tell him he’s not welcome at any price. No groceries, no auto repair, no house, no clothes, no medical care. Boycott the man himself, until he decides that he will refund what he has stolen and become a decent human being.
If anyone ever deserved to be killed for his overt opposition to basic human decency, it would be this man. Contributing to basic health-care services being treated as a valuable commodity instead of a human right is deserving of the most horrible of deaths (this tendency is one of the worst problems with our current “civilization”). I really don’t intend any of this as hyperbole. What this man is doing is tantamount to mass-murder. Worse even. He has established himself firmly as an adversary to the human race as his actions will literally kill (more) people and at the very least increase human suffering on a massive scale – all for some money. Repulsive in the extreme.