Will Shkreli Be Arrested, and For How Long?
He says he's delighted with the verdict, but he has still been indicted on 3 out of 8 counts, and faces up to 20 years in prison. Do you think he will end up serving a prison sentence, and how long would you say?
Comments (38)
Bloomberg:
he became the most hated man in America. But then, as luck would have it, Donald Trump was elected and snatched the crown off Shkreli's head, and wears it proudly.
That explanation does initially make sense to me. Did he leave anything out?
What research? The drug has been available since 1953. Toxoplasmosis (a brain infection) is not a communion disease, but not exactly rare, either. (Cat feces is a common source.) Generally it occurs in immunocompromised people (AIDS, transplant patients, other causes). It's also used on certain intestinal parasites (single celled parasites, not worms).
Burroughs Wellcome (now part of GlaxoSmithKline) charged a great deal for AZT (azidothymodine) in the 1980s. BW didn't invent the drug--it was a failed cancer compound. Was it very difficult to manufacture? I don't know -- but the price of the drug seemed to have been set on the basis of how greatly an effective drug was desired, more than anything else. As it happens, AZT wasn't all that effective, and at the dosages used, had severe side effects. (It's still used, but in combination with other anti-vitals, at lower concentrations.)
This new anti-inflammatory drug being tried out for heart disease which also seems to work on certain kinds of lung cancer--canakinumab, a monoclonal antibody--is priced at $200,000 a year. My understanding (very small) of monoclonal antibody drugs is that they are very complicated to manufacture, and generally years of research has been done before they are brought out. Maybe at this point it is justified.
You might not be taking any medications regularly (you are still a young guy) and you certainly aren't buying medicines in the United States. Most drugs sold in the US are sold at a much higher price point than they are in Europe, for instance. Why? Because our terminally fucked up health-care financing system allows drug companies to charge the highest possible price the market will bear. Most country's health financing systems aren't that fucking dumb (to use the technical term for it).
Reminder to self: Use scoop from now on and wash hands afterwards.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well it is a rare disease in the medical & technical sense, even though the disease causing agent is not. So his argument seems to be that there should be research to produce better drugs, but at such a low price point, there isn't enough money to invest in research. There just isn't enough volume of sales to generate the revenue required.
In addition, he says that there is no one who needs the medicine who doesn't get it. If they don't have insurance, he claims they can get Deraprim for free.
The guy does come off as a dick and very arrogant, but if you listen to some of his more peaceful and intelligent interviews where he doesn't show off and act all knowing, then it does seem he has an argument.
As for whether he'll be arrested or whatever, I don't know. I admit to not knowing all his potentially criminal dealings, but I do know that he's a morally hollow wretch.
Might be true, might not. A lot of companies have "compassionate donation" programs where they reserve a certain number units for those who can't afford them. However, that benefit isn't (usually, as far as I know) extended to countries that can't afford to buy stocks of this (or any other) drug.
Quoting Agustino
Sometimes new drugs just aren't needed. For instance, syphillis (Treponema palladium) is still treated with penicillin, after 70+ years of use. For some reason Treponema palladium just didn't develop immunity to penicillin. Of course, some people are allergic to penicillin, and other drugs (antibiotics) are employed.
I don't know whether to believe Shkreli about the side effects. The FDA Rx page mentioned bone marrow suppression in conjunction with other rather potent drugs. The FDA also said that the drug is toxic at a level close to the therapeutic window -- which is not all that unusual. Overdoses can be fatal. It may increase the likelihood of cancers, but that was in patients who had taken the drug for quite a while (2 years) and mice. Normally the drug would be taken for a matter of weeks, with dosage reduced over time.
My thought is that Shkreli's motivation was purely venal.
The drug was introduced in 1953. It's patent would have expired several times over. It has been, by definition, generic for quite a while. The demand for the drug was probably stable, (with increasing demand in the 1980s and 90s because of AIDS. But then, after 1995, the demand would have declined again).
Quoting Agustino
There should. Sure. But one of the problems with diseases like toxoplasmosis, fungal diseases in particular, and some others is that the biology of the disease agents (fungi, for example) are just too similar to our own to be wiped out easily. Any drug that kills an internal fungal infection is likely to make the patient sicker, at least for a time, because what the drug is aiming for in the fungus also operates in all of our cells.
The drug that can kill a virus, a cancer, a bacteria, a fungus, or something else selectively, without screwing up everything else, is really wonderful. Penicillin, for instance, kills the syphilis bacteria with out bothering us. (It used to do the same thing for gonorrhea, but now Neisseria gonorrhoeae is resistant to several different types of antibiotics, and is occasional untreatable.)
The disparity is shocking, a testament to the massive extortion (your money or your life) Big Pharma is able to legally exert in the US Market. Importing drugs such as this into the US is illegal, because the FDA has not approved their safety.
Wigga. But, seriously, what a man-child.
Not really. They didn't even invent the drug, they bought the drug. There is no patent on the drug either, so anyone could produce the same thing and sell it if they wanted to.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I think that he doesn't take the theoretical economics approach to the question, but rather the entrepreneurial one that if you want to do research on the drug, then it cannot be at the same price. And he profits from the first mover advantage since obviously someone can't produce the drug overnight to compete against him.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
Yes, he very likely is a hollow moral wretch, but we're discussing the wrongness of just this one act of raising price.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, you would be right that this only applies to US. But then, if no one is harmed by the price raise - except insurance companies - is it bad? I mean those insurance companies are already huge and they make money out of doing almost nothing - I think it's quite good if they lose it :P
Quoting Bitter Crank
Is it possible that toxoplasmosis (usually in HIV patients I suppose) is treated most of the time in conjunction with other potent drugs?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well yeah, no doubt it is at minimum also venal. But then the question here is if there are people who were actually harmed by it.
People would be harmed. The drug is used in other countries to treat malaria (rare in the US at this point) and other parasitical diseases.
Under the kind of capitalism we have--somewhat regulated, somewhat moderated, somewhat limited in greed--companies are not entitled to unreasonable profits -- like profits from uninhibited gouging.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-10/martin-shkreli-pharma-bro-sentenced-to-seven-years-in-prison/9534776
I really don't know why he couldn't have seen this coming. I don't even think he was as bad as he was made out to be originally, but he deliberately set out to play up his negatives. For a supposedly smart guy...
The weird thing about the government that I've realised lately is that... if you upset the wrong people, they will find a reason to put you in jail, and if they don't have one, they will even make one up. Shkreli was thrown in prison for a joke of a reason - securities fraud - because he used money from the pharma business to pay back hedge fund investors - and everyone made money in this transaction, there was no prejudice. Why isn't the government going after Elon Musk, who used Tesla funds to pay for SpaceX costs in 2008? He created a potential prejudice for his investors and acted illegally - if Tesla would have gone bankrupt, then Elon would have been charged with defrauding his investors. But there was no prejudice, and Elon didn't upset the wrong people, so no one bothers.
It is against the law for a CEO or administrator to create a prejudice for the company he runs in his own personal favor. So, say you own 100% of the shares in a company, and you are also CEO. Say you get one of the clients to pay you directly, as a sole trader (for example). Technically, you've done something illegal, since being the CEO or administrator is what allowed you to secure that contract, and yet, in your duty as administrator, you should have secured it for the company, not for you personally. In normal circumstances, nothing happens - because who would report you? But if you get in the wrong books of some people, then you may get in trouble even for something like this, as silly as it is. The law is often crooked.
Interesting Trivia:
As I was saying in another thread, mental illness seems quite common amongst entrepreneurs, despite popular culture about it.
I doubt there was any conspiracy here. It's common knowledge the American justice system is at best very inconsistent in its application, so it's important to stack the odds as much in your favor as you can. That means at the very least appearing humble and contrite from the beginning, particularly when you know you've broken a law (even one which is usually not prosecuted in the breach).
Did Musk commit securities fraud?
No, but securities fraud isn't the only wrongdoing a CEO can do.
Quoting Baden
I agree.
:rofl:
How is that funny?
I don't know man, but I find it sort of funny when powerful people who think they are invincible find out that that's not true. Don't you find it funny? I mean surely, someone got killed, it's not funny in that sense, but the context is funny, at least to me.
No. Death isn't funny.
It is thought that significant numbers of people live with the worm parasites. If you are a cat owner you will have had or be carrying the plasmid at some point.
In mice the same disease makes mice disinhibited, and fearless of cats. Cats eat the mice and the cycle of the plasmids continues. natural selection in action.
There was a recent study which demonstrated that people responsible for causing road accidents predicted high for toxoplasmosis, leading the researchers to conclude that the same sort of recklessness found in mice was also a factor in humans.
Cat lovers beware. If you wonder why you are sometimes a bit over-the-top, impatient, or reckless; try taking some anti-worming pills.
Depends on who is murdered.
Actually - also depends on how the murders are described. Agatha Christi was quite a humourist at times.
You British really do take everything so seriously... such stiffs :rofl: - carrot stuck up the :snicker:
It was kind of bad taste, Agu. And I can say that in full confidence that my arse is not presently impaled with a vegetable of any description.