Martin Shkreli, chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, said he would lower the price of the drug Daraprim after being criticized for boosting it 50-fold to $750 a pill. “It’s the most obtuse, dense, incomprehensible pricing structure ever created by humanity”.
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Martin Shkreli: This is a disease where there hasn’t been one pharmaceutical company focused on it for 70 years.
However, on Tuesday, Shkreli posted on Twitter that he “will be on national news to set the record straight on misconceptions and announce some adjustments to our plan“. “He looks like a spoiled brat”, Trump said Wednesday.
“It seems like the media immediately points a finger at me so I point one back at em, but not the index or pinkie”, Shkreli wrote on Twitter with a link to the Eminem song “The way I am”.
Shrkeil made his Twitter profile private shortly after the ABC interview aired. This is not the first time that Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager with a reputation for outspokenness, has been at the centre of a controversy. A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in 2012 requested a federal investigation into his short-selling activities.
“Shkreli said he will cut the cost of treatment in response to the public outcry”, according to CNBC.
The drug was first developed in the 1940s and is used to treat toxoplasmosis, an infection that is not common, but is particularly unsafe and can be fatal when it affects babies born to mothers who have become infected or adults whose immune systems are critically compromised because they are suffering from Aids or some cancers.
Shkreli – who is being sued for $65 million by his former company, Retrophin – had defended the move as recently as Tuesday morning, telling CBS News that his decision to raise the price of the 62-year-old drug from $13.50 per pill had “a lot of altruistic properties to it”.
Before founding Turing – the company now under fire – he was CEO of Retrophin, a drug company he founded in 2011 and helped lead to be about a $500 million valuation. “It was not a core product”.
The company also said that it would work with hospitals or patients on a case-by-case basis so that everyone can afford the medication.
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Even PhRMA, a trade group that frequently finds itself defending the industry against critics, pointed out that Shkreli’s company, Turing, was not a member and slammed the door on him. “We do not embrace either their recent actions or the conduct of their CEO”. While in his 20s, he drew negative attention for encouraging the FDA not to approve drugs manufactured by companies whose stock he was selling short, reports The New York Times.
