You may remember that Shkreli, the founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, became infamous past year.
Advertisement
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, asked Shkreli what he would tell a single, pregnant woman with AIDS who needed Daraprim to survive, and whether he thought he had done anything wrong.
Cummings: But since I have you in front of me after trying to get you in front of this committee for so long, let me say this: I want to ask you – no, I want to plead with you – to use any remaining influence you have over your former company to press them to lower the prices of these drugs.
Presentations by Turing executives, part of the trove of documents obtained by the panel., show that as early as last May, the company planned to turn Daraprim into a $200-million-a-year drug by dramatically increasing its price. She said the company invests in research and development, as well as programs that help patients afford drugs.
Members of Congress wrestled with questions about why the prices of some old drugs are rising so fast at a Thursday hearing. Rightly or wrongly, you’ve been viewed as a so called bad boy of pharma.
During his summoning at Capitol Hill, members of the congress asked him repeatedly regarding Daraprim, but continued to utter the phrase, “On the advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question”. He said, ‘Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government’.
The hearing committee quickly got fed up with him, and booted Shkreli from the room within minutes.
‘People are dying and they’re getting sicker’.
Shkreli was arrested for securities fraud in a separate case.
After refusing to answer question after question, Rep. Trey Gowdy, who was visibly frustrated commented that Shkreli “didn’t have to be prodded to talk” on television or Twitter. He strums his guitar on YouTube and paid a reported $2 million for the only known copy of an album by the Wu-Tang Clan.
So the Congressional committee lectured him – especially the ranking Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings. HIV patients and those suffering from cancer are at risk from toxoplasmosis and for them the rise in price of the essential drug meant higher cost of treatment.
“For him to tweet that for the world to see – wow – that seems to suggest, you know the rules don’t apply to me”, Thomas Plante, Santa Clara University professor of psychology, said after watching the hearing today. “The First Amendment protects Mr. Shkreli’s right to post his opinion on Twitter that the Congress is populated by ‘imbeciles.’ This is classic political free speech”, said lawyer Paul Callan. “I think at the end of this story that he is a hero”, attorney Benjamin Brafman said.
“I intend to follow the advice of my counsel, not yours”, the former pharmaceutical executive said with a tight smile.
Advertisement
Shkreli’s lawyer Ben Brafman tried to explain that his client wasn’t being disrespectful but that his seemingly rude behavior was the result of nervous energy.
