CEO Drastically Raises Cost of Life-Saving Drug, Says It’s Altruistic

CEO Drastically Raises Cost of Life-Saving Drug, Says It’s Altruistic

Imagine being only 32 years old and becoming possibly the most hated man in America.

If you were a pharmacy CEO and you just raised the cost of a a life-saving drug from $13.50 per pill to a whopping $750 per pill overnight, then you just might qualify.

Martin Shkreli, former hedge fund manager and now CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical, did just that with Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug which is seen as the standard of care for treating toxoplasmosis.

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Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic infection which can be serious or even life-threatening to babies born to mothers who become infected during pregnancy. It can also be deadly to those who are immunocompromised, such as HIV/AIDS patients and those undergoing chemotherapy.

This is not the first time Shkreli has drastically raised the price of a drug. Last year, as CEO of Retrophin, Shkreli raised the price of Thiola, a drug used to treat kidney stones, from $1.50 to $30 per pill. (Interestingly, Shkreli is being sued by Retrophin for $65 million).

Dr. Judith Aberg, chief of the infectious diseases division at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is alarmed. “What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” she said, adding her concern that hospitals may be forced to use less-effective therapies. The Infectious Disease Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing calling the price increase “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.”

To that Shkreli replied that the price hike is ‘altruistic.’

He also claimed that the profit is ‘appropriate’ and “not any kind of ridiculous profit.”

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