Outrage of the Day: Hedge Fund Dude Buys AIDS Drug, Increases the Price 5000 Percent, the Internet Ain't Having It
One sure way of making people really angry at you is to buy the rights to a life-saving AIDS drug and increase the price of it by 5000 percent overnight.
That's just what Martin Shkreli, founder and CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, did and boy did it work.
The New York Times reported on the drug increase Sept. 21.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. 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.
...The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim "unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population" and "unsustainable for the health care system." An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.
Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.
Soon after, the Internet picked up its pitchforks and torches and began to rain down the hellfire on what many see to be is a price gouging, heartless bastard.
i hope his hedge fund collapses, his company is taken over and he needs this drug but is short by a buck and dies pic.twitter.com/M0Il4a6BIY
— Aditya M (@almostinfamous) September 21, 2015i'm not normally like wow i wish this person would die but this AIDS drug hedge fund guy should probably fall into a pit of flaming garbage
— ＤＯＧ_ＰＥＴＴＥＲ６６６ (@aardvarkwizard) September 21, 2015A note to me from a biotech CEO (he asked I not share his name) re: Turing Pharma & Daraprim price hike. pic.twitter.com/hEyW2eeM5a
— Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) September 21, 2015
Shkreli has been making the rounds in response to the outcry, but it doesn't seem to be helping.
may you contract the most resilient strain of MRSA on this planet for which their is no cure @MartinShkreli
— Petty Fuckbean (@boigles) September 21, 2015
Shkreli has actually bought several older drugs over the past five years and done the same thing. So he's had a lot of practice in pissing people off.