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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

HIV medicine price gouger

It's not "HIV medicine"

It's a drug that is used, among other things, to treat Toxoplasmosis in HIV patients, and the only one FDA approved for this in the USA. Generics of it already exist and are sold the world over, but not allowed in the USA because of the licensing.

This outcry is useful free publicity for him. He'll climb down on the price soon, but still gain a massive profit increase. The arguement is that the meney is needed to fund R & D on newer, better, drugs. There's something to that, given how many years it can take to gain FDA approval, but he also want's big fat fucking bonus cash and large dividends for shareholders.

Somebody asked him on twatter how he slept at night:
 
All too common these days in the US. The two drugs mentioned have limited use, so understand some price increase (he took it too far though). But many common drugs like Digoxin, topical corticosteroids, and doxycycline have shown marked price increases that are hurting consumers. Hell Penicillin had about a 800% increase last year. Its getting out of control.
 
It is usually because of the smaller patient population and a smaller company buying it that cant absorb losses as well or looking to make a splash with their investors. He could be a scumbag for all I know, but this happens fairly often.
 
Kittycat5 said:
It is usually because of the smaller patient population and a smaller company buying it that cant absorb losses as well or looking to make a splash with their investors. He could be a scumbag for all I know, but this happens fairly often.
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Why do smaller companies buy such items if not to profiteer? There is no excuse. Is obscene. Geezer should be force-fed cat shit until he's down to his last $9 then be left to make his decision at the new price.
 
Yeah, it's shocking, really. When you demand patent royalties on life-saving drugs, you are basically saying "pay me money or die". If that isn't holding people to ransom, then I don't know what is.

I don't see a major problem with time-limited patents on luxury goods; waiting 20 years before you can have a fancy new vacuum cleaner isn't actually going to kill anyone (apart from maybe a few people with severe dust allergies, and they are a sufficiently small minority to be worthy of special assistance). Even a few hairs in the wrong place, or no hair where there should be hair there, or skin that is a bit too light or too dark, is a cosmetic matter for most people. But any patent royalties charged on medicines that literally make the difference between life and death should be subject to stringent controls, because saving lives is more important than making profits. I do believe that inventors have a right to have their name recognised if they choose; but just because something was hard work absolutely does not mean that you have an automatic right to earn money from it -- and certainly no automatic right to earn every time someone makes use of it.

If we simply annulled all drug patents, we are told that the pharmaceutical companies would pick up their ball and go home; but I am not convinced that big business is quite as indispensable as they would have us believe. After all, we would still have -- or at least know how to make -- all the medicines already developed to date, and somebody would be bound to want to manufacture them even for only limited profits. Or the NHS could set up their own facilities to manufacture their own most needed medicines in-house. And even without the profit motive, people would not just stop inventing. Anybody who did develop new medicines would not be doing it for financial gain -- meaning that it might take longer, but the results would be of higher quality.
 
Well, it's a nice noble and morally correct paragraph. But it's totally and hopelessly idealistic and about as realistic as the chances of me getting a blowjob off a unicorn down the pub later on.

The problem lies with the US FDA. There are countless generics of this drug already manufactured and available all over the world for next to nothing. They just can't be sold in the US, because this specific one is the only one approved for sale there to treat toxoplasmosis in HIV patients, and pregnant women, chiefly.

So, I would suggest a less drastic measure than blowing up all the pharma companies and (fuck me) waiting for the NHS to re-invent what already exists, the US FDA could simply fast track approval of one of this drugs generics.
 
jude101 said:
The problem lies with the US FDA. There are countless generics of this drug already manufactured and available all over the world for next to nothing. They just can't be sold in the US, because this specific one is the only one approved for sale there to treat toxoplasmosis in HIV patients, and pregnant women, chiefly.
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Which in itself is madness. It should be the substance itself that is approved for a particular use, irrespective of who made it. All means to the same end are equally valid, and all that.

Borrowing a move out of Big Business's playbook and treating Customs seizure as a process defect, it's got to be worthwhile grey-importing pharmaceutically-pure generic drugs into the USA from countries where they are unlikely to be adulterated, for the purpose of saving lives. No patient is ever placed at risk because the imported generic substance -- which did not harm anybody in the country of origin anyway -- is demonstrably chemically identical to the officially-approved one. All this will end up coming out into the public gaze if anyone manages to take it all the way to court; and when they see just how rotten the system is, the public might well turn out to be on the side of saving lives rather than making profit.
 
Bob Funkhouse said:
Tbf I'm not fully informed in this story. Is it just simply that he is a complete and utter lowlife profiteering cunt? Or are there other contributing factors for ridiculous price rise
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He's a cunt.

This is not the first time that Mr. Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager with a reputation for outspokenness, has been at the center of a controversy.

While in his 20s, he drew negative attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve drugs made by companies whose stock he was selling short.

He was among a group of investors ordered by a New York judge to pay $2.3 million to Lehman Brothers to cover a losing bet on the markets in 2007.
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Two former employees sued him for not paying their wages, while another former employee accused Mr. Shkreli of taking over his personal email and Facebook accounts and harassing his family through social media.

The board of his first pharmaceutical company accused him of using the company as his personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.
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Mr. Shkreli set off to start his own hedge fund, Elea Capital Management, in about 2006, but it soon ran into trouble. In July 2007, Elea, Mr. Shkreli and others were sued by Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers for failing to pay for a put option, essentially a bet that the market would fall. When the stock market instead climbed, the fund didn’t pay. A judge issued a $2.3 million default judgment against Mr. Shkreli and the fund.
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Still, the hiccup did not slow Mr. Shkreli down. He soon started a new hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, using his initials and those of his business partner, Marek Biestek. At MSMB, a fund focused on health care, Mr. Shkreli once again plied his trade in short-selling. But rather than simply sell short a company’s shares and hope that eventually the stock would fall, Mr. Shkreli actively campaigned to make things difficult for the drug companies.


In 2011, Mr. Shkreli decided to enter the pharmaceutical industry, raising money from MSMB investors to start Retrophin.

The company looked for older, somewhat obscure drugs that it could acquire and turn into so-called specialty drugs for rare diseases, with substantially higher prices. Retrophin now sells three drugs, and total sales reached $24.1 million in the second quarter of this year.
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There's an absolute shit load more evidence against Mr Teflon man but frankly I thought you'd get bored reading it. Just google him.
 
StoneHappyMonday said:
He's a cunt.









There's an absolute shit load more evidence against Mr Teflon man but frankly I thought you'd get bored reading it. Just google him.
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Yep, a proper cunt. He was lucky that Lehman went tits up before they could collect on the 2.3mio.
 
jude101 said:
Well, it's a nice noble and morally correct paragraph. But it's totally and hopelessly idealistic and about as realistic as the chances of me getting a blowjob off a unicorn down the pub later on.

The problem lies with the US FDA. There are countless generics of this drug already manufactured and available all over the world for next to nothing. They just can't be sold in the US, because this specific one is the only one approved for sale there to treat toxoplasmosis in HIV patients, and pregnant women, chiefly.

So, I would suggest a less drastic measure than blowing up all the pharma companies and (fuck me) waiting for the NHS to re-invent what already exists, the US FDA could simply fast track approval of one of this drugs generics.
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And this would prevent any new manufacturer from pricing it similarly? Doubtful. We could shorten or eliminate patents but it will still not necessarily lower the cost to patients. It already is happening where generics are showing massive inflation for commonly used drugs around for decades. No one is coming in a taking the market by pricing them lower, so a rarely used drug, even as a generic stands no chance at being priced affordably.
 
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