Martin Shkreli came to national attention as the wunderkind CEO of a pharmaceutical company who bought the rights to Daraprim (a drug used primarily to help HIV patients) and hiked the price 5,000 percent overnight. As the bad press continued for Shkreli, pharmaceutical bosses distanced themselves from him, saying he was greedy and an exception to the rule. Shkreli disappeared from the scene after he was arrested for securities fraud. Well, Shkreli’s back and he’s pissed that all of these other pharmaceutical executives are treating him like a leper.
On the bare-bones Pharmaskeletons.com, an angry and vengeful Shkreli lists instances of greed, criminal behavior, and other sleaziness of individual members of the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA. Not all his claims are backed up, explained, or accurate. But the site still offers an embarrassing catalogue of bad deeds, which Shkreli told STAT he would continually update.
So far, he’s listed out 26 companies and provided a little dirt on almost all of them. For instance, he noted that in 2004, Abbot Laboratories hiked the price of an AIDS drug by 400 percent, sparking public backlash and a boycott by doctors.
It’s a good name for a website about exposing Big Pharma. Shkreli is a bit pathological in his belief that his company’s excessive price gouging was unethical, and in his defense by the industry standards of pharmaceutical companies there seems to be very little evidence of “ethical practices.” At the bottom of the website listing is Shkreli going at Billy Tauzin successor Stephen Ubl. You may remember Billy Tauzin as the Louisiana Republican representative who wrote a drug benefits bill and then a couple of months later left Congress to become the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)—that’s the chief lobbyist for Big Pharma. Stephen Ubl is the president now and he’s said some mean things about Shkreli, and more importantly has been saying that these recent events with price hikes are a business culture issue from outside the pharmaceutical industry—which I guess is made up of God’s angels. Here’s Ubl in a recent interview discussing Valeant and Turing Pharmaceuticals:
Those companies are really hedge funds masquerading as pharmaceutical companies, and don't reflect the values of legitimate, research-intensive companies within our membership. There are pragmatic steps that could be taken to address these situations.
In the case of Martin Shkreli, who took a 62-year-old drug that is well off-patent and raised the price dramatically, you want to create an incentive for an entrepreneur or another company to come in on the other side of that equation and frankly eat Martin Shkreli's lunch. But it's very difficult to do that if it takes 50 months to get a competing generic product on the market.
Martin Shkreli had this to say to Ubl:
Turing is a small company researching drugs for rare diseases that no one else wants to. All of your member companies, with a few humorous exceptions, have billions of dollars and don't need price increases. I'm sorry if my company's and patients' survival is inconvenient to your gigantic income streams.
Look in the mirror. This website took me half an hour to make, just 'membering a few moments from the past. Pharma is a wonderful industry that does great things, but trying to throw me under the bus is foolish. Let me remind you 90% of your members' CEOs could not hold a candle to me in scientific knowledge, achievements or wealth and entrepreneurial achievements.
90% of you are the same as you, Mr. Ubl, slick guys in suits who make a living spewing bullshit. Also keep in mind that I took a very low or zero salary at all of my companies. Your CEOs enjoy the fat paychecks they receive from price increases. I put my money from price increases into research. Half of big pharma CEOs could not tell you the first thing about science. Maybe focus on changing that before you point at me and make false statements.
While I believe the issue here is changing the regulations and the monopolistic profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry, I also find it hilarious that Shkreli is perfectly correct in raging against the machine.