By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Following his arrest this week for alleged securities fraud, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli resigned his office.
Turing garnered infamy for the 5000 percent price increase of Daraprim, a $13.50 medication indicated for patients requiring treatment of Toxoplasma gondii–an opportunistic pathogen afflicting the immune-compromised such as AIDS patients. Monthly treatment cost now associated with the drug can be upwards of seventy-five thousand dollars. See previous articles HERE and HERE.
Interim CEO Ron Tiles thanked the 32-year-old for “helping us build Turing Pharmaceuticals into the dynamic research-focused company it is today.”
Turing Pharmaceuticals issued a press release which reads in part:
Zug, Switzerland, December 18, 2015 — Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, a privately-held biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative treatments for serious diseases and conditions, today announced the resignation of Martin Shkreli from the position of Chief Executive Officer and the appointment of Ron Tilles to the position of Interim Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Tilles will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors. He said, “We wish to thank Martin for helping us build Turing Pharmaceuticals into the dynamic research focused company it is today, and wish him the best in his future endeavors. At the same time, I am very excited about the opportunity to guide Turing Pharmaceuticals forward. We remain committed to ensuring that all patients have ready and affordable access to Daraprim and Vecamyl. Research Development on new medications continues to be a priority for the company. With the dynamic leadership of Eliseo Salinas as head of Research and Development and Nancy Retzlaff as head of Commercial Operations, Turing Pharmaceuticals is poised for great success in the coming years.”
I find it interesting that this press release mentioned Daraprim and how it is coupled with all patients having affordable access. It seems rather certain that Turing is responding to the pariah reputation it has earned as a result of the price increases but hedged its bets by focusing on patients and not insurance providers and institutions, which have been under Shkreli made a target of high pricing. It will certainly remain to be seen what happens in practice, especially in light of the cash cow it now can still milk.
Turing will have a serious PR problem to contend with despite the resignation of its flamboyant and extravagant CEO. It could establish some goodwill with some reasonableness.
Depending on single streams of revenue can be problematic, especially when science discovers alternate drug treatment regimes and large insurers update their formularies. There are many forms of justice, my friends.
By Darren Smith
Source:
Deutsche Welle
Turing Pharmaceuticals, Press Release
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Oily, You are a slippery one. “The morons are the ones lining up to get fleeced and praising god and the constitution at the same time.” You’ve fallen hook line and sinker for that stereotype. Congratulations…you fit in.
Turing garnered infamy for the 5000 percent price increase of Daraprim, a $13.50 medication.
Nobody wanted something for nothing in this case. They could have charged $27 and made 100% profit. Wouldn’t that have been enough?? Apparently not.
Olly
You remind me of the mother of the only soldier out of step. “Look at my boy; he’s the only one in step.”
The US is the only country that does it this way and per capita pays two to three times what other countries pay. The US is the only country that advertises pharmaceuticals throughout the media, besides New Zealand, and pays 21% of the budget for advertising as opposed to 16% for R & D. Then Big Pharma states that prices have to be high to cover R & D. And, the sheep buy it. The US is the only country that doesn’t negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for social health care such as Medicaid and Medicare. This is because of the morons in the US. I am against all this. Ergo, I am not the moron. The morons are the ones lining up to get fleeced and praising god and the constitution at the same time.
You might want to have a look see at this before you head on down for your annual flu shot.
GlaxoSmithKline: Corporate Rap Sheet
http://www.corp-research.org/glaxosmithkline
From The Nurse Educator Youtube channel:
What does the Flu Vaccine Insert Say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oat0BKcfxOQ
Just the facts, man. You can leave your tinfoil hat off for this one.
BigFatsoMike: “Markets” have the nuance that they are “free”. Perhaps put those two words together. Free market. Then ad: Free market patent controlled for the monopoly capitalists.
A true free market would allow me to replicate the pill and sell it for fifty cents.
We are from France!
“A true free market would allow me to replicate the pill and sell it for fifty cents”
A free market would allow me to compress NaCL and ground glass together and sell it for fifty cents (or $750) to any rube dumb enough to buy it.
And the answer from economics professors is that bad actors will be cleared from the market – over time; completely ignoring the power of advertising, the necessity of information to make effective market decisions, and the damage done over time.
Markets are computational tools. The interesting thing is that they work to produce any systematic result at all. Mistaking free markets for a moral force makes about as much sense as claiming that we can divine morality from the operation of flood waters, earth quakes or volcanoes.
Street drug dealers have same marketing mindset when it comes to competitive pricing.
But when a gang also advertises it owns the streets, then there’s going to be trouble.
“There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with Shkreli’s pricing strategy. The simple fact is: the value of something is whatever others are willing to pay for it.”
Markets solve a very narrow type of optimization problem, involving the allocation of resources, without a lot of additional social or computations mechanisms.
Markets provide an answer to a particular, narrow question. Sometimes the result is useful. Sometimes the result provides some insight regarding what is possible. Sometimes the result is clearly not in the interest of the parties involved and society at large. There is nothing moral about markets or the results they produce.
Why would anyone allow their life be guided in every case by the operation of a mechanical calculator with no consciousness, no awareness, no consideration given to the needs of human beings or any thing else? It is up to us, using human judgment, to decide whether the answer, provided by markets, actually solves the problem we are considering.
Markets may tell us how to build the lowest cost automobile possible. It is for us to decide whether that automobile is safe enough to drive. Markets can tell us the cheapest way to produce food. It is for us to decide whether that food is safe and nutritious.
Markets are calculators that solve a particular kind of optimization problem – nothing more and nothing less.
Shkreli shot himself in the foot…both feet in fact. I have no sympathy for him or his kind. More of them should be “caught”, big and small. The fool made money by potentially egregious activities, yet had the unmitigated gall to blow his own horn too loudly lately. Had he just shut the flip up, and not made an absurd price adjustment, he’d not be in the mes he is in today. I thought I was pretty smart at 32 years of age…but I wasn’t and I know it now (some good ideas, perhaps, but no process to enable them)…this guy isn’t even on the IQ index IMO. I was still in uniform at 32 and had experience, but I lacked solutions….although I was developing some such as not being a barbarian even if able. Back then the last thing I considered was how to scam money from others…just a fact of circumstance, not virtue.
Terry,
You are aware that the story you quote is satire from Andy Borowitz?
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/lawyer-for-martin-shkreli-hikes-fees-five-thousand-per-cent
Well said issacbasonkavichi. Well said.
Albania, during the East Europe/West Europe Divide prior to Gorbachov, stayed intact and isolated from its neighbor Yugoslavia. Croatia was within Yugoslavia and bordered Albania. Never the Twain shall meet. Here the problem is due to the intermarriage between an Albanian and a Croatian. There is a gene pool dysfunction which is recognized in that part of the world and of which we are blind to. This guy needs to be jailed in the penal colony of Georgia. I am speaking of our Georgia, not the nation state.
For those of you who want capitalism in our health care industry so be it. But call it by what it is: monopoly capitalism of a Hitlarian fashion. Yes, give a corporation a patent and let the corporation charge seventy five thousand dollars for a pill. That is one pill too large to swallow. If you know what I mean jelly bean.
What comes around, goes around: Lawyer for Martin Shkreli Hikes Fees Five Thousand Per Cent
A criminal lawyer representing Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli has informed his client that he is raising his hourly legal fees by five thousand per cent, the lawyer has confirmed.
Minutes after Shkreli’s arrest on charges of securities fraud, the attorney, Harland Dorrinson, announced that he was hiking his fees from twelve hundred dollars an hour to sixty thousand dollars.
Shkreli, who reportedly received the news about the price hike while he was being fingerprinted, cried foul and accused his attorney of “outrageous and inhumane price gouging.”
Nick,
Our electorate is just ignorant enough to buy what he and any other politician is selling. There is such a dearth of common sense anymore; makes our founding fathers political prophets:
“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. Alexander Hamilton
Olly, That’s the Canadian’s stump speech. I’ve heard it 50 times. He’s running for Mayor of Munchkin Land.
ALAS POOR PONTIFICATOR, HIS TOUNGE HAS FINALLY WORN A HOLE THRU HIS CHEEK!……..
Meanwhile, Issacbas-etc has absolutely perfectly “nailed it”*!*
“The US needs a single payer basic health care insurance system where the government negotiates for drug costs and sets the prices for procedures.”
” Shkreli’s antics would not be possible without the pharmaceutical industry’s ownership of our representatives.”
isaac, the very government that you claim is in kahoots with big-pharma, yeah, that government, you want to give total control of healthcare by negotiating drug costs and prices for procedures.
Did you eat paint chips as a child? I agree our government is wildly corrupt but only a moron would then desire you give them MORE control of anything. Geez, unbelievable.
There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with Shkreli’s pricing strategy. The simple fact is: the value of something is whatever others are willing to pay for it. It seems our country is no longer the defender of free market principles it once was, and everybody wants something for nothing. Shame.
What is most interesting here is that Shkreli is nothing compared to the gouging done by the health care industry, primarily the health care insurance part. Americans seem to place a sacred trust in free enterprise; yet it is proven continuously that free enterprise and the capitalist system equate to the two golden rules: charge what the market will bear and who has the gold makes the rules. Every other of our peer nations have come to understand that this sacred religion of making money cannot apply to the basic elements of society. Americans pay two to three times more per capita, than those of our peer nations for the same level of health care. Americans pay five to eight times more per capita for administrative costs, which is where this Shkreli like activity takes place.
Shkreli is a sideshow and a punter that simply takes the focus off of the real problem. The US needs a single payer basic health care insurance system where the government negotiates for drug costs and sets the prices for procedures. Most, is not all, of the more successful and evolved health care systems in the world allow for a private supplemental system for those who wish to be taken to the cleaners.
America is a great country but a foolish one as well. It fools itself into believing it is the world’s greatest democracy when it is at the bottom under the title of the world’s greatest oligarchy. Shkreli’s antics would not be possible without the pharmaceutical industry’s ownership of our representatives. Just as with the NRA, Big Oil, Health Care Insurance, and other special interests, you may need to get the votes to get elected but you won’t make it to the race if you aren’t in the pocket of the special interests. Somehow Shkreli is very much the American.
I guess Tiles doesn’t know anything about his company. They buy drugs already in the pipe line or on the market and price gouge for profits. Thst is hardly a research focused company! What a ……..(add your own insult here).