Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, December 18, 2015

Yes, Big Pharma, Shkreli is You

The pharmaceutical industry has apparently been breathing sighs of relief over the arrest and charging of PharmaBro for various bits of financial criminality. The drug makers have been proclaiming that Shkreli is not one of them.

Not exactly true, as in "bullshit". Shkreli is, by far, not the only thief to buy up an old drug and then hike the prices to astonishing levels:
In 2008, Congress held hearings about this practice, focusing for instance on Ovation Pharmaceuticals, which acquired a drug to treat a breathing problem in newborns and raised the price to $1,500 per unit from about $100. There was also Questcor Pharmaceuticals, which spent $100,000 to acquire a decades-old drug for infantile spasms and raise its price from about $40 a vial to over $23,000, with the biggest jump occurring overnight in 2007. Valeant has done this type of thing for several drugs.
They are all pirates and criminals. They figure that if people need a drug, they'll pay what it takes and do whatever it takes to get it; a marketing strategy identical to dealers of meth, heroin and crack cocaine.

There once were people involved in the process who genuinely cared about the health of the public and saw it as their mission to develop new medicines to save lives. Most of those folks are long since retired or dead. Now, they're just bespoke-suit-wearing pirates. It wouldn't matter to them what they were selling, as long as they could make an unconscionable amount of money doing it.

They are evil.

3 comments:

montag said...

As much as we enjoy Shkreli's trouble, we overlook the fact that his arrest was not for his drug price douchery but good old fashioned stock fraud and manipulations with his hedge fund. Or to put it another way.

It is OK to steal from ordinary people. To steal from the rich is a crime.

bearsense said...

"There once were people involved in the process who genuinely cared about the health of the public and saw it as their mission to develop new medicines to save lives."
Jonas Salk comes to mind immediately.

Expatriate Owl said...

Were I his lawyer, I wouldn't want a jury trial. I would opt for the bench trial and leave him to the mercy of the judge, and hope that the appeal is not heard by Judge Denny Chin on the 2nd Circuit. And yes, there will be an appeal, because (A) The Daraprim price increase fiasco, while not related directly to the stock fraud charges now hanging over Shkreli's head, will, in all likelihood, be introduced as evidence at trial and/or at sentencing to demonstrate Shkreli's total disregard for the well being of the public; and (B)Shkreli has the wherewithal to retain counsel for the appeal.