D'bag, or Capitalist Hero? - Page 4

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by tadd

Rick:
You are quite wrong on this one. When I was in grad school at Vanderbilt the folks across the way were doing the COX2 inhibitor studies. That was researched and developed to trials at a university.

I'm sure every university hosts some level of clinical trials, because college students need the cash. When I was in college, there were ads everywhere to earn $1000 for getting injected with this or that bug while you stayed in quarantine and were observed for a few days. I'm not saying that's not useful research, but it's not the same thing as universities inventing the drugs on the taxpayers' dime and then pharma cos. charging an arm and a leg once they get a patent.

I have a buddy who's made gazillions on a few drugs he patented. He purposely based his company in Bethesda, MD, where he could (when it was still legal to do so) use NIH and FDA employees as consultants. His costs would have been a lot higher, if he'd had to hire people away as full-time employees. And keeping close to the pulse of the FDA also made things easier for him. That stuff is crazy expensive and the talent doesn't come cheap. That guy write 10 figure checks all the time for years before what he's working on brings in a dime.

Bowling · 09-23-2015, 06:44 AM

D'bag. Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act at work, making us healthier and bringing cost down. This is a generic 30+ year old malaria drug not an HIV drug. It is used for HIV infected patients who contract secondary infections. Believe he has lowered the price after gaining a couple days of public exposure for his company.

aschen · 09-23-2015, 08:30 AM

I cant imagine how this has anything to do with the AHCA.

Completely free market capitalism would not allow the patent system to exist. However, innovation would stop. I work in R&D and we would quite literally lay off the whole organization if we could not protect our work through the patents.

Tervuren · Tervuren's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

And the one with the highest profit buys out or runs out of business all of his competitors until he is the only one left. Then he can do what the douchenozzle in the OP did. Monopoly is the ultimate goal of capitalism. You are right about efficiency, competitors make the goal of profit inefficient, so they must be eliminated.

This is like saying, the ultimate goal of communism is a despotic dictatorship.

There is a subtle difference between "Free Market" and "Capitalism".

Capitalism, is where the means of production, are controlled by the demands of the people who produce. It is not an unregulated free market system, it requires careful regulation, yet not regulation so intrusive as to defeat the system.

We have not had a capitalist society in the USA IMHO since the mid 1800's. It has been progressively broken in different ways by different administrations since then. As we enter a welfare state where the economy is supported by taxes levied, then production supported by government, it is no longer the producers that control the means of production, but rather, those with political connections. If we had a capitalist society, the government wouldn't be subsidizing the "big pharm" through paying the ever increasing prices of healthcare. A non capitalist system that we have grown into, also allows people to get rich off of continually selling cures/symptom masks, rather than solving cause(A much better solution). A capitalist system would be focusing on raising personal health, rather than having such a low health, there is a constant need for "cures".

scottbombedout · 09-23-2015, 09:10 AM

$0.66 a tablet in the UK.

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottbombedout

$0.66 a tablet in the UK.

Someone calculated that the annual cost of this drug is $650K per patient at the $750 price. The guy backed off and will name a new price in the next few weeks. Somehow I think it will still be several thousand percent over what it was before he paid $55 million to snatch up the rights.

Tobra · Tobra's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christien

I don't agree with that, but I would definitely say that capitalism has no place in health care, period. Saving lives and improving health should never take the bottom line into consideration.

You are either mistaken or have a fundamental lack of understanding of what capitalism is.

flatbutt · 09-23-2015, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tadd

Rick:
......

Most Pharma only carries a drug the last mile (phase II/III clinical trials). One should also note that the role of government has been reduced in clinical trials to overseer. Pharma pays its way anymore.

......

Actually the Pharma company is responsible for all 4 phases. A university may do phase 1 studies as those are much smaller studies and are focused on dose ranging and tolerance rather than efficacy. But the cost of the NDA will be borne by the company. Currently the PDUFA filing fee is $2.1 million.

stomachmonkey · 09-23-2015, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by techweenie

Someone calculated that the annual cost of this drug is $650K per patient at the $750 price. The guy backed off and will name a new price in the next few weeks. Somehow I think it will still be several thousand percent over what it was before he paid $55 million to snatch up the rights.

I don't think $650 k is realistic.

I read there are roughly 10,000 annual users.

Douchbag said it's a $5 M a year business.

That's, at current price, $500 per patient which at $13.50 per pill gets you roughly 35 pills.

I'm under the impression this is prescribed similar to an antibiotic where you take a course to knock back a bug. Not a Doc so I could be way off base there but that's my understanding.

I think what's happened is he just finished a $90 M series A raise, blew $55 M of it buying a drug with annual revenue of $5 M meaning best case scenario (if that's 100% pure profit which we know it's not) he's looking at an 11 year break even.

IMHO, it's as simple as Mr Douchbag's arrogance caused him to make a monumentally bad deal that he thought he could swing in his favor.

Put another way, he claims the product does not make enough profit, that may be true but it's only because he paid too much for it.

Dan J · 09-23-2015, 04:56 PM

Capitalism is GREAT!!!
This a$$wad is a total Douche nozzle

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

I don't think $650 k is realistic.

I read there are roughly 10,000 annual users.

Douchbag said it's a $5 M a year business...

Then I guess he was foolish to spend $55 million buying it.

stomachmonkey · 05:57 PM

Wow, this guy is turning out to be an ******* for the ages.

I sense his name will take on some new meaning.

http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/cli/memorandum/oca_memorandum_651104_2013_58.pdf

Additionally, years before anyone even heard of the Daraprim price hike, Shkreli found himself at the center of another controversy. In 2013 as the CEO of biopharmaceutical company Retrophin, Shkreli was engaged in a harassment suit against employee Timothy Pierotti who claimed, in a sworn affidavit to New York's State Supreme Court, that Shkreli and Retrophin hacked into his various online accounts and sent a letter to Pierotti's wife saying, "I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this."

targa911S · 09-23-2015, 05:57 PM

not the first time. He did the same thing with a liver drug. This guy is not repentant at all and a bit cocky about it. He's a waste of skin. Jonas Salk is crying in his grave.

sammyg2 · 06:14 PM

He even looks like a douche bag. It would be a real shame if he came down with some exotic life-threatening disease and the only medicine that would help him was DENIED!!!!!!

Quote:

Almost exactly a year ago, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli pulled virtually the same stunt he recently tried with Daraprim, a critical parasitic-infection-fighting drug whose price he attempted to raise overnight from $13.50 per pill to $750.

Only last year, hardly anyone noticed.

In 2014, Shkreli bumped up the price of a drug called Thiola by 2,000%, from $1.50 a pill to $30. Back then, he was the chief executive officer of a company called Retrophin Inc.

Thiola, like Daraprim, is an orphan drug, meaning it was developed specifically to treat a rare medical condition. In this case, the drug in question was used to treat cystinuria, a rare disease that causes amino acids in the body to form stones in the kidney, ureter, and bladder.

Thiola is the only drug of its kind on the market, and people with cystinuria generally need to take more than one Thiola pill each day. There's no cure for cystinuria, which means people with the genetic disease have to take the medication frequently to prevent the stones from building up. The starting dose for adults is 800 milligrams, or eight pills, per day.

Retrophin acquired the US marketing rights to Thiola in May 2014. By September, blogs like In the Pipeline and FiercePharma picked up the suddenly inflated price. In the Pipeline's Derek Lowe called the move the "most unconscionable drug price hike I have yet seen."

There was one big difference, Lowe pointed out, between Thiola's price hike and other drugs whose prices have increased in a short time frame: There had been no new studies on the drug, which meant the company hadn't spent any money on developing the product to make it better.

A few weeks after the new price was reported, Retrophin fired Shkreli, claiming the decision was because of irregularities in stock.

Shkreli tweeted in response: "Rather upset at my inane BOD [board of directors] who was overly focused on irrelevant innuendo but also now can pursue a NewCo [new company] without them. So net-net excited."

Looks like it was only a matter of time before his "NewCo," also known as Turing Pharmaceuticals, would pull a similar price-rising stunt.