Ex-hedge funder buys rights to AIDS drug and raises price from $13.50 to $750 per pill

According to the New York Times, Martin Shkreli, 32, the founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the rights to Daraprim for $55 million on the same day that Turing announced it had raised $90 million from Shkreli and other investors in its first round of financing.

Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago. Prices have increased as the rights to the drug have been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the next, but nothing like the almost 5,500 percent increase since Shkreli acquired it.

Ex-hedge funder buys rights to AIDS drug and raises price from $13.50 to $750 per pill

That was RAW Story's characterization. Not mine. Shut your trap.

I've yet to see this boy genius but I've read he's real smug about it as well.

Evil little tw**!

With Hillary's announcement that she will reveal a plan to contain prescription costs and the bottoming out of Pharmaceutical companies on Wall Street today, I think Anonymous is the least of this little douche bag's worries!

The latest in a long list of unreasonable and outrageous price increases.

In August, two members of Congress investigating generic drug price increases wrote to Valeant Pharmaceuticals after that company acquired two heart drugs, Isuprel and Nitropress, from Marathon Pharmaceuticals and promptly raised their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent respectively.

Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics.

Doxycycline, an antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October 2013 to $1,849.00 by April 2014 according to the two lawmakers.

It just ain't about AIDS kiddos - welcome to the market economy- just DON'T GET SICK!!!!

This is late stage capitalism! This is the CEO of Nestle saying humans don't deserve free water! This is Tom Brady saying the idea of Trump for president sounds "great".

So, um, the T-TIP and TPP trade deals? They should help these pharmaceutical companies make an even greater profit, no?

There's your lede!

A huge overnight price increase for an important tuberculosis drug...

But the fascist told me to shut my trap!!

Updated On: 9/22/15 at 08:54 AM

I wish there were some sort of open source or open innovation framework in place for the design, production, and distribution of FDA-approved medication akin to open source software and open hardware. This is not my lane, but to me at least it appears that big pharma has no real competition and the financial barriers to entry in that industry are nearly insurmountable. By his account, no company with a paltry $5 million in revenues could afford to continue bringing the pill to market.

I'll never defend the asswipe, but health care spending is down to record levels. So, my naive take on it is that either more consumers must develop a need for the pill (up demand) or he must artificially diminish stock (down supply) in order to meet the earnings target before unloading it on the next 30-something master of the universe.

Updated On: 9/22/15 at 05:39 PM

First, no judgments here. He's the owner of a hedge fund so his calling in life is to acquire as many assets as possible and to maximize his fund's earnings.

With that out of the way, there are hundreds of thousands of folks on the planet like me who develop free software in our spare time and distribute it freely. Some call it open source software while others prefer the term Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Some of the open source software out there rivals and at times eclipses shrink-wrapped software from commercial vendors, in terms of performance. But most importantly, it's FREE. Since we're not encumbered by non-disclosure agreements, corporate overlords, and budgets, we're only limited by our collective imagination, skill, and time.

I don't mean to belabor the point but there is no open source (or open technology equivalent) that I'm aware of that could keep big pharma honest where prices are concerned. Absent that, the only other option is gov't-mandated price controls which give many voters pause, including me. I'm not an attorney so it's not clear to me how the federal government has the authority to regulate prices.

Finally, despite the slowdown in health care spending, prescription medication costs are trending upwards. Check out the following article for deets. http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/04/news/economy/healthcare-costs/

1. Hedge funds are barely regulated unlike mutual funds and private equity funds

2. Not everyone has your moral compass (South Florida)...he's in it to make as much $$$ as he can which isn't a crime in an of itself

3. If there isn't a set of rules in place already it's my understanding that any new rules must meet muster with the constitution

4. Same soup, different spoon; 19th century railroad barons have been supplanted by multinational corporations and land barons. Check out the slide show on the top 25 US land owners at http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-landowners-america#

5. I personally would like to kick Martin Shkreli's azz, but it's not obvious to me that he's broken any laws.

If anyone is interested in purchasing a pill directly from this D.B. guy... give him a call 646-217-2783

Just saw that this is being circulated online and thought you might like to know...before the demand gets too much and the line is disconnected.