By: Darien Campo Designer
The Daraprim price hike scandal was one of the most talked-about stories of 2015, cementing former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli as the “bad boy of big pharma.” Daraprim, a drug used to treat infections in HIV-positive individuals, was purchased by Turing pharmaceuticals in early 2015. In September of the same year, CEO Shkreli increased the market-price of Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill, causing a 5000 percent increase.
The price change was immediately criticized by pharmaceutical companies, running presidential candidates, and all of mainstream media. Through this long campaign of skewering headlines and viral media, Martin Shkreli has come to be known to the public as the new face of greed and the evils of capitalism.
It’s almost embarrassing how quickly everybody (including myself) accepted Shkreli as the bad guy and worked together to lambast him online. Mainstream media and clickbait headlines don’t tell the whole story, and so over the last year Shkreli has taken multiple opportunities to explain and defend his actions as the head of Turing. After taking the time to hear the story from Shkreli’s point of view, I found that my opinion on him did a 180. I’m not here to say that what Shkreli did was right, but if you hate the man, it should be based on fact and not sensationalism.
“I think the idea that I represent pharma is insane,” Shkreli stated in a January, 2016 Vice interview. “I don’t like most drug companies, I think most of them do a bad job-I think that I’m different.” He justifies his company’s decision, saying that the price hike only affects large corporations and not innocent users.
“We sell our drugs for a dollar to the government; but we sell our drugs for $750 a pill to Walmart, to Exxon Mobil, to all these big companies, and they pay full price because f— them, why shouldn’t they?” The higher price only applies to larger corporations whom Shkreli deems to be the true super-villains of the pharmaceutical world. Those profits are then used to fund Turing’s research and development division: developing newer, cheaper and safer drugs.
In fact, Shkreli brags that Turing spends more revenue on research and development than any other pharmaceutical company in the country: 60 percent of their revenue, in fact, versus the standard 15 percent. In an interview on CNBC Shkreli revealed that Daraprim is far from perfect and that Turing hopes to replace it with a more efficient drug.
Even after its price hike, Daraprim is one of the cheapest drugs on the market, even though it treats one of the rarest infections around. The illness that Daraprim treats is so rare that Shkreli claims most hospitals will never even need the drug but, just to be safe, Turing offers a smaller, cheaper bottle of the drug that hospitals can use to stock up with.
Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals have done everything they can to make Daraprim one of the most highly available drugs in the country. He claims that most of their stock of the drug is sold off for only one dollar; if somebody can’t find or afford Daraprim, all they have to do is contact Shkreli and he will personally give them a free supply of the drug.
Martin Shkreli does not regret his decision to raise the cost of Daraprim. “If that’s the price I have to pay to find a new medicine for dying kids, I’ll raise it even more.”
“With respect to Daraprim,” lawyer Benjamin Brafman told the press after Shkreli’s infamous congressional hearing, “I think you will see he has saved many many lives with his brilliance.”
Contact the author at dcampo13@wou.edu
