WIKIMEDIA, SLASHMEMartin Shkreli has made himself arguably one of the most despised people in the pharma industry, at least for this week. Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, defended his firm’s decision to increase the price of its newly acquired toxoplasmosis drug from $13.50 a pill to $750.
“[T]he drug was unprofitable at the former price, so any company selling it would be losing money. And at this price it’s a reasonable profit. Not excessive at all,” Shkreli told CBS News.
Shkreli’s frankness about his company’s profit-minded motive and the justification for the—perfectly legal—price increase sparked outrage on traditional and social media. Under the category “Despicable,” for instance, The Daily Beast referred to Shkreli as “Big Pharma’s Biggest A**hole.”
But Shkreli, it seems, is merely the latest poster child for a common, yet clearly unpopular, practice. As FierceBiotech reported, “companies like Valeant ($VRX) have pursued a practice of buying old drugs and immediately raising the price in the U.S. . . . Shkreli’s extreme sticker shock strategy on an ancient therapy, though, has ...
