Remember the terrorist bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia? If you"ll recall (or follow the link and read), Richard Jewell, the security guard who discovered the backpack containing the bomb, heroically warned people away and prevented it from creating a larger tragedy than the two lives it claimed. His hero status was short-lived, however, as he became the prime suspect. With only an accusation, his name was gleefully dragged through the mud by every mainstream news outlet at the time until he was eventually cleared by the FBI. Though ultimately vindicated, Jewell"s life was just about ruined.
The US media is always casting heroes and villains in their contrived narratives, packaged and delivered for the consumption of the common American nitwit, many of whom swallow it whole and then follow the lead by piling on in social media forums, twittering and facebooking and generally being the good hapless dupes that they are. The latest Bad Guy of the week is Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. As anyone reading this probably already knows, Shkreli has been demonized for buying the rights to an outdated drug, Daraprim, that treats a rare condition called Toxoplasmosis and jacking the price up 5000%. On the face of it, it sounds absolutely awful. Martin was excoriated in the public sphere as the worst kind of greedy exploitative capitalist scumbag, accused of holding a captive audience virtually hostage and making them pay a hefty ransom if they wanted to live (Toxoplasmosis is fatal if left untreated). And Martin did his image no favors, happily donning the costume of the evil caricature that was custom-tailored for him by the American press, a nice bespoke suit of fine villainy.
However, as with every story, there"s much more nuance here than is fathomed by the short-attention-spanned and feeble-minded MSM lapdogs reporting it. Thanks to the internet--and in this case, Martin"s proclivity to make himself accessible to anyone in the world by way of a series of YouTube livestreams--we can actually get his side of the story. Let"s investigate.
Martin claims his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased Daraprim and jacked up its price in order to finance the development of a much more effective modern drug to treat Toxoplasmosis. The problems with Daraprim, as Martin explains, is that it"s very old (invented in the 1940s), it doesn"t work that well, and it"s toxic to bone marrow and can be as deadly to the patient as to the disease itself. There was no incentive to create a better drug because the disease was so rare, and there was already a cheap (if problematic) drug on the market to treat it, so it has mostly gone unnoticed in the pharmaceutical industry. Martin wants to replace Daraprim with a new drug that targets the enzyme that causes the disease without the bone marrow toxicity. To accomplish this, his plan is to raise the drug"s price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. At $750 per pill for an 84 pill course, the total cost is now $63,000 to cure the disease, which as Martin points is both rare and fatal. There are similar drugs on the marketplace (i.e. for other fatal ailments) that cost anywhere from $80,000-$130,000 per course, so Daraprim is still relatively cheap for a what is a life-saving medication. Martin explains that, while the price hike is indeed extreme, his company has made it easier for patients to get the drug by lowering the co-payment to "almost nothing", with the insurance companies picking up the tab and, furthermore, that Turing gives away 60% of their Daraprim to patients who can"t afford it, leaving the company with a 40% gross margin. He says that nets out overall to $25,000 in profits for Turing per treatment course, virtually all of which goes back into R&D for a Daraprim replacement.
So, as the plan goes, by buying Daraprim and ramping up the price, Turing Pharmaceuticals will be able to use the profits to invent a new, more effective drug, while in the meantime being compassionate to Toxoplasmosis sufferers by making sure they can still get Daraprim affordably. He claims no one is dying as a result of the price hike and emphasized those who need it can still get it. Martin"s full explanation is nicely encapsulated in the following video:
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