Back when pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli was defending the 4,000-5,500 (conflicting reports) percent price hike of the life-saving drug Daraprim, he said his company should be allowed to wet their beak. Turning a profit for any business is a necessity and Shkreli’s argument was that, based on the work his company put into marketing the drug and producing the drug and all the things that big companies say ...
"This drug was doing $5 million in revenue," he continued. "And I don't think you can find a drug company on this planet that can make money on $5 million in revenue. Most costs are much higher than that."
His argument is that it costs a lot to keep a drug company up and running. It's not just how much money they're spending on researching and developing new treatments — it's also operating costs, marketing expenses, access plans, education efforts, etc.
A group of high school students in Sydney, Australia tried their hand at producing the drug Daraprim—which Shkreli and company hiked from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill overnight.
The group of 11 high school students, ages 16 and 17, successfully recreated the drug, Daraprim, for a mere $2 a pill, according to scientists from the University of Sydney.
“We’ve been really shocked by Martin Shkreli,” Alice Williamson, a postdoctoral teaching fellow with the university’s school of chemistry, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I couldn’t really stop thinking about it.”
The kids stayed after school and began working on this with some of their science teachers.
The students spent about $15 on the material needed to produce 3.7 grams of Daraprim — about $100,000 worth of the drug in the U.S. market, Williamson said.
Nothing against these students who are clearly far more advanced in chemistry than I am—but they are high school students doing this as a class project. The teacher and her students wanted to make the point that pharmaceutical prices are clearly way out of proportion with costs. Mission accomplished.