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Medicine that costs $1 to make raised in price from $13.50 to $750.00
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August.
CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments. The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems.
After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution.
Cost of Daraprim Medication Raised By Over 50 Times
BBC is reporting on a massive price hike of an essential drug used by AIDS patients:
The head of a US pharmaceutical company has defended his company's decision to raise the price of a 62-year-old medication used by Aids patients by over 5,000%. Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim in August. CEO Martin Shkreli has said that the company will use the money it makes from sales to research new treatments.
The drug is used treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic affliction that affects people with compromised immune systems. After Turning's acquisition, a dose of Daraprim in the US increased from $13.50 (£8.70) to $750. The pill costs about $1 to produce, but Mr Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, said that does not include other costs like marketing and distribution. "We needed to turn a profit on this drug," Mr Shkreli told Bloomberg TV. "The companies before us were just giving it away almost." On Twitter, Mr Shkreli mocked several users who questioned the company's decision, calling one reporter "a moron".
Why not switch to a generic pyrimethamine tablet? They don't exist right now, according to the New York Times (story includes examples of other recent price hikes):
With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim's distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.
The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.
The drug is also used to treat malaria and appears on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. Toxoplasmosis infections are a feline gift to the world.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gman003 on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:53PM
When you launch a drug, even a generic one, you do have to go through an approval process to demonstrate medical equivalence (this isn't complete bullshit - even if your active chemical is the same, your delivery mechanism and formulation might make it more or less effective (you don't want someone selling aspirin that does technically contain aspirin but it doesn't release it until after you've shit it out)). To do this, you need to run a medical trial.
I refuse to associate these scumbags with the good Alan, so I'll call them "Turdlike Pharmaceuticals".
Turdlike is refusing to sell their drug to anyone in sufficient quantities to run a medical trial, and refusing to sell to anyone who might use it for trials. So now you can't get approval the way a normal generic can, by proving you work just as well as another formulation of the same drug. You basically have to test it like it was a brand-new drug, which is unprofitable because even if you succeed, Turdlike will just drop their prices back down to normal so you don't reap much in the way of profit, definitely not enough to recoup your losses on approval.
Despite your preferences, this problem could be solved both by more and less regulation. Getting rid of the medical-equivalence testing could do it, but it might be better to just forbid companies from restricting who and how much they sell to. The former idea has some obvious issues (see the earlier example of non-functional aspirin), while the latter doesn't restrict anything that would have happened in an ideal free market anyways (it only prevents actions that happen only because of other market distortions).
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @01:11AM
you don't want someone selling aspirin that does technically contain aspirin but it doesn't release it until after you've shit it out
Ah, good point!
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings