CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
According to the Washington Post, Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old hedge fund billionaire, became the recent target of enormous criticism. Shkreli achieved this when he decided to raise the price of Daraprim — a new drug his company Turing Pharmaceuticals had purchased — from $13.50 to $750.
Daraprim is a drug that has been used to treat some AIDS and cancer patients and, according to CNN, has been around for 62 years. The main use for Daraprim is to treat toxoplasma.
“If we think about infections, we usually think most infections people get are bacterial, E. coli, or staph or strep or viral influence a cold and so forth. With AIDS, which is related to this, it depresses the immune system and so they are parasite[s] that are eukaryotic cells, not bacteria non-viruses that can also cause infections… that healthy individual’s immune system can fight off the infections and it’s typically not a problem,” explained Dr. Ted Lee, a Fredonia biology professor and the head of the Health Professions Advising Committee.
Lee explained that this medicine works by targeting the eukaryotic cell rather than the bacterial infection.
“Bacterial cells don’t have a nucleus and eukaryotic cells have a nucleus. That’s the major difference,” said Lee. “One reason antibiotics work so well is because they target bacterial cells, but not eukaryotic cells. And so an antibiotic is not effective against this — because it’s not a bacterium and because it’s a eukaryotic cell more similar to our cells — that makes it more difficult to treat.”
Shkreli defended the increase, stating in an interview with Bloomberg Business that Turing “needed to turn a profit on the drug. This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business.”
Shkreli further explained Turing’s decision and actions.
“Our first and primary stakeholder is patients. There’s no doubt about that,” said Shkreli in an interview with the Washington Post . “Any company selling it would be losing money [and by raising it, it’s become] a reasonable profit, not excessive at all.” He also said “this is the more appropriate price for Daraprim. At this price, Daraprim is still actually on the low end of what orfan drugs cost, and we’re not the first drug company to raise drug prices.”
He would go on to say that many of the patients have used it for less than a year ever since Turing acquired the rights to Daraprim. Shkreli said in an interview with the New York Times, “the proceeds from the newly-priced Daraprim will be used to research better treatments and raise awareness for toxoplasmosis, an opportunistic parasite infection that can cause serious and life-threatening problems.”
Many were outraged over the now-expensive treatment. “Under the current pricing structure, it is estimated that the annual cost of treatment for toxoplasmosis, for the pyrimethamine component alone, will be $336,000 for patients who weigh less than 60 kilograms and $634,500 for patients who weigh more than 60 kilograms,” according to a letter The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association wrote to Turing.
This steep price increase caught the attention of everyone and the media. Many of the presidential candidates have responded to Shkreli’s increase as well.
According to Business Insider, Donald Trump responded “He looks like a spoiled brat to me,” while Hillary Clinton has even taken to Twitter and expressed her anger over Shkreli’ decision.
“Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” tweeted Clinton.
Shkreli, responding to all of the backlash he received, agreed to lower the cost of the drug. However, he insisted it would not go down to its original price.
“Yes it is absolutely a reaction — there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action. I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people,” said Shkreli.
The new price of the Daraprim medication has not yet been released by Shkreli.