A detested ex-hedge funder's company is charging 5,000% more for a pill that protects AIDS and cancer patients -- a drastic move that came overnight and angered public health officials.
Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of a Daraprim tablet -- a 62-year-old drug that fights against the life-threatening parasite toxoplasmosis -- to $750 from $13.50, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The physicians group and its HIV Medicine Association condemned the increase as “unjustifiable” and “unsustainable” in a letter to Turing.
Shkreli, 32, promised the hike wouldn’t prevent poor people from getting the pill, which costs about $1 to produce, in interviews Monday. Turing will make a “fair profit” that will help it find new medications to treat the parasite that afflicts pregnant women, cancer patients and other people with weakened immune systems, he said.
"I guess some people think Daraprim access will decline instead of increase," Shkreli wrote on Twitter. "I guarantee better access at lower prices to patients than ever."
Yet the startup founder whose company profile boasts of “his career in the hedge-fund industry” has drawn an outcry. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused Turing of “price gouging.” The medical experts group took it to task for “disrupting access” to the drug after buying it last month.
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINEA file photo shows a label for Daraprim, which now costs over 5000% more after Turing changed the price last month.
Daraprim, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in 1953, could now cost patients as much as $634,500 per year, according to the Sept. 8 letter from IDSA and HIVMA.
“This cost is unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population in need of this medication and unsustainable for the health care system,” the letter said. The experts cited the inclusion of toxoplasmosis in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s five “neglected parasitic diseases.”
The bug is “a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness,” according to the agency. Over 60 million men, women and children in the U.S. carry the parasite, but their immune systems usually block any symptoms. Other experts warned the new price could limit hospitals’ supply of the drug in interviews with The New York Times.
“This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody, and I just think it’s a very dangerous process,” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the head of the infectious disease division at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
And Clinton lashed out against the company in a Tweet on Monday.
“Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” she wrote. “Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on.”
But Turing officials plan to offer Daraprim free for “qualified, uninsured patients,” they said in a statement. Shkreli, who once donated $1 million to the New York City public high school he attended, pledged no patients would be denied treatment “based on their ability to pay” in an interview on Bloomberg TVMonday.
“We’re spending tens of millions of dollars to make a better version of Daraprim that’s more efficient, less toxic - Daraprim’s a very toxic drug,” Shkreli said. “These patients deserve a drug company that is turning a profit - a fair profit - and also developing a drug that is better for them. They don’t deserve a drug that’s 70 years old.”
CDCA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention picture shows the toxoplasma parasite, which the agency calls "a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness." Daraprim is a common treatment for the disease that afflicts pregnant women, cancer and AIDS patients.
Shkreli has never been popular in the biotech field. Shkreli dissed other companies on a stock-gossip website as he was shorting their shares, according to a 2014 Bloomberg profile. In 2012, he was accused of trying to manipulate the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for profit by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in washington. He was cleared of federal charges.
Last year, he was fired from Retrophin, a company he helped found, and was accused of misusing company funds.
Shkreli got his start interning for CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, who distanced himself from the hated figure.
"I just keep hearing all day about some kid who was an intern at my old shop 15 years ago; I don't even know him. Enough!" Cramer said on Twitter.
@MARTINSHKRELI VIA TWITTERShkreli captioned this, 'THEY SEE ME ROLLING...' in reference to the song 'Riding Dirty.'
@MARTINSHKRELI VIA TWITTERShkreli said he was at a 'Turing Pharma Puppy Party 2015.'
Shkreli appeared tone-deaf to his critics and relished in the media attention.
"I need a haircut," he tweeted Tuesday.
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