Pharma Bro jailed after judge declares him a ‘danger to society’

[ET180]

I simply said he did nothing to contribute to that drug, a link to results of a trial does nothing to dispel that assertion. Sorry, but this jackass didn't self-teach to the point that he developed a ground-breaking drug and he clearly went into niche drugs for rare conditions solely because he realized he could jack the price up to exorbitant sums and get away with it.

Again, neither you or I were not at the company and we don't know what he contributed. It is possible to educate oneself and obtain a Ph. D without spending an hour in a class room. Aubrey de Grey (Ph. D in biology from Cambridge, 2000) and several other people have done it. Hell, if he came out tomorrow and announced that he is transitioning to female, Harvard probably would have awarded Martin an honorary degree in whatever field he self-identified as being an expert in (https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...ns-harvard-after-chelsea-manning-hire-n801341). I guess that's one approach for a light sentence. Don't recommend it though.

The man doesn't have an ounce on altruism in him, he's a classic narcissist, and as someone with two successful startups under my belt, one with a number of co-founders, I can be pretty sure his co-founders would have not only been fine but been better off without him. He's not an idiot, he's an asshole who has accomplished nothing to make the world a better place and lots to make it a worse place. Donating $1M you stole from someone else, entirely to feed his own ego probably because of some mental anguish he suffered in said high school doesn't make him any less of an asshole. Why anyone would be an apologist for this jerk out of anything but obstinance is beyond me! Like I said, you, me, and most of ET have done more to make the world a better place, why not sing those praises instead of defending this jerk?

So now you are speculating about his intentions. Even a professional psychologist would shy away from publicly diagnosing people as having narcissistic personality disorder without ever meeting in person. I never stated that he doesn't have narcissistic tendencies, but even if he does, so what? Being a full-blown narcissist is perfectly legal. Everyone has personality flaws to some extent. They have not interfered with him doing good works. I would hate to have the world view where I try to speculate about what possible secret evil intentions people I don't like have for doing the things that they do. It just seems unhealthy.

I guess I and possibly others here stick up for him because I feel that the media has been too hard on him. They don't judge him by the same standards as say, Anthony Wiener, Manning who is a traitor to our country, or the 15 year old kid who burned down a large part (think around 25-50 square miles?...not sure on the exact area) of forest of which I and several million residents have been breathing polluted air worse than China for most of the past two weeks. If Weyerhaeuser accidentally started the same forest fire, Greenpeace would be demanding the beheading of the company's entire executive leadership. But 15 year old kid who they won't even name who was caught throwing fireworks into the forest and then tried to flee once caught...no, nothing to see there. No media or environmental outrage at all. And of course there are a ton of examples of media bias when it comes to politics, but that's too much to discuss here.

By the way, I don't know anyone from here. I'm currently serving time in jail, but what have the people of ET done to make the world a better place? Aren't we mostly here to ask questions about making money, avoiding taxes, and occasionally end up in a political debate? Doesn't seem that altruistic without knowing the motive behind making money...I suppose I could speculate...

 

[ET180]

How you people continue to get sucked in by narcissists over and over while they screw you and you continue to adore them is....well an interesting study in human psychology to put it nicely.

First off, you do realize that insurance is a risk pool and "shoving a stick in insurance companies asses" was shoving a stick in your ass if you were insured because you paid for it, don't you?
Second, manipulating stock prices is capitalism. Dumping arsenic in the river in front of your plant is capitalism. Buying out all your competition and forming a giant monopoly is capitalism. Capitalism isn't a religion, it's a system that works very well but breaks down in certain circumstances. Orphan drugs is a classic market breakdown, so much so that it makes it into business school case studies along with the other 3 examples I listed. We don't have complete unbridled capitalism in this country and thank goodness for that. Welcome to the United States.

This jackass wasn't following the pharma model of spending big bucks on research and amortizing that over the few successful drugs you get out the other end of the pipeline for the duration of your patent. That's an honorable business model, although we can argue about what an appropriate level of profits is. He acquired a drug that didn't have a generic version yet for very little, one that he did nothing to develop. He then jacked the price up solely to line his own pockets, then claimed (never verified) that he sold half of it for $1 when he caught heat for it. Note that at the same time he claimed that they sold half of if for $1 they also claimed they were going to lower the list price and then never did....this whole narcissist making up facts as he goes, only doing something when he get's called on it, then never actually following through on his promises starting to sound familiar?

It really says a lot about anyone who would defend this asshole, not sure if you're just a sucker or really find anything he did admirable. I wouldn't certainly hope it's the former, the latter says nothing flattering about you.

I don't have time to address your entire post. I already addressed a few of your points in my previous post. However, just a few points:

1. Not sure how capitalism came into this, but pretty sure that it's illegal to dump arsenic into rivers. Environmental laws are separate from economic system. It's not like somehow a communist state guarantees that you'll never encounter pollution.
2. What would happen if an orphan drug was never picked up and developed for sale? How do patients get cured if the cure is not available (orphaned or original)? Honestly, I hope drug companies have a very strong economic incentive to develop better drugs. Because it's only a matter of time before I and others that I care about will need them. I hope the company that cures cancer has a market cap the dwarfs Apple. If capitalism is working, that should happen. I guess I missed the debate on here were people were arguing for anarchy. You must be thinking of another discussion.

 

[Pekelo]

Even a professional psychologist would shy away from publicly diagnosing people

Luckily, I am a shrink only on the net. Both Shkreli and Trump have clearly NP disorder, it is not even a debate. Now if he does actually have a mental disorder people like you could use that fact as an excuse for his behaviour. The truth is, Shkreli never contributed anything noteworthy to society, contrary to his lawyer's claims. That he got a Ph D from the net is laughable...

 

[Sig]

I don't have time to address your entire post. I already addressed a few of your points in my previous post. However, just a few points:

1. Not sure how capitalism came into this, but pretty sure that it's illegal to dump arsenic into rivers. Environmental laws are separate from economic system. It's not like somehow a communist state guarantees that you'll never encounter pollution.
2. What would happen if an orphan drug was never picked up and developed for sale? How do patients get cured if the cure is not available (orphaned or original)? Honestly, I hope drug companies have a very strong economic incentive to develop better drugs. Because it's only a matter of time before I and others that I care about will need them. I hope the company that cures cancer has a market cap the dwarfs Apple. If capitalism is working, that should happen. I guess I missed the debate on here were people were arguing for anarchy. You must be thinking of another discussion.

Helps if you actually read the discussion, hard to have a conversation if you ignore what has been said before.

This has all been very enlightening in a twisted kind of way. It's fascinating to know that at least some people idolize those who are assholes and criminals simply because other people have done worse and gotten away with it. I'm curious how the internal dialog goes there, because by that logic everyone who only murdered one person should be defended as a great guy because, hey, OJ got away with killing two people. And this whole attraction to narcissistic behavior, I'd love to know what the underlying pathology is there. I mean you have to laugh otherwise you'll cry!

 

[Sig]

To everyone on this thread, let's agree on some basic facts that are beyond dispute because there are some pretty huge misconceptions here.

Shkreli acquired Daraprim which was a medication developed 1953. He had absolutely nothing to do with developing it. While there is an infinitesimally small but non-zero chance he turned a business degree into a PhD in molecular biology with self study and didn't feel the need to brag about that, he simply wasn't born yet in 1953. Daraprim's patent was long expired but no generic version had been developed because the original owner sold it for a reasonable price and the market size was small enough that it wasn't worth developing a generic version.

It takes some time to set up and be approved to make and sell a generic drug, while those on the drug can't stop taking it during that time period. Shkreli exploited this market breakdown by increasing the price of the drug 56X over the previous price. A generic version of the drug was eventually produced by generic drug company. Shkreli was never any savior bringing a drug that otherwise wouldn't have been available or would never have been developed without him. In the normal, non-asshole version of this situation in pharma a drug maker announces that they plan to stop making a drug in the next X months and generic drug makers step in to fill the gap. Nobody dies, and no-one needs to jack the price of the drug up at all, let alone 56X.

The pharmaceutical model is to spend a large amount of money on a lot of R&D, much of which will end up in dead ends and a few that will turn into successful drugs. The cost of that R&D is necessarily amortized over the successful drugs sold during the patent period. What Shkreli did IS NOT this pharmaceutical model in any way, shape or form! What he did has far more in common with manipulating a stock than it does with developing and selling a drug.

 

[Martinghoul]

The silly douchebag doesn't really warrant all the ink spilled, honestly... He's just another Kim Kardashian-style celebrity, except in his case it wasn't a sex video that propelled him into the limelight.

 

[beefcaketrade]

I doubt it. He knows what he's doing. He intentionally likes to irritate some people.

A high functioning autistic.

The mannerisms and lack of social cues and the antics/bad jokes that some equate to 'trolling' and 'annoying'. I just wonder.

Lets assume someone was autistic and said some crazy stuff. Do you go easy or treat them the same as someone normal with malicious intent?

 

[beefcaketrade]

I am not versed in the details but always wondered. Can someone give me the down low on how he apparently got on medical patents as one of the main contributors? His background is in finance, is it not? Medical research requires serious study and knowledge and is subject to peer review. Sure, you can tell me that anyone can file patents with no peer review by submitting the required forms and paying the fee and hoping it gets a stamp of approval. But I'm wondering what his contribution is to the medical technical/science oriented patents he holds. I can't imagine he were in a lab coat mixing chemicals and what not with the chemists that hold doctorates.

 

[Sig]

I am not versed in the details but always wondered. Can someone give me the down low on how he apparently got on medical patents as one of the main contributors? His background is in finance, is it not? Medical research requires serious study and knowledge and is subject to peer review. Sure, you can tell me that anyone can file patents with no peer review by submitting the required forms and paying the fee and hoping it gets a stamp of approval. But I'm wondering what his contribution is to the medical technical/science oriented patents he holds. I can't imagine he were in a lab coat mixing chemicals and what not with the chemists that hold doctorates.

The patent office evaluates a patent on it's merits, not the the people who sign their names as contributors. That's really just a prestige thing. If he wanted a CEO could have his name put down on every patent his company issued even if he had nothing to do with the actual research. Most CEOs just don't have egos that fragile or at least realize they're exposing their fragile ego by doing that. All very consistent with this guy, but hey, it's possible he became a molecular biologist by reading up on it, but is so humble he just puts his name on the patent and doesn't brag about his actual contribution to that patent. In the this case it's a vanishingly small possibility, but apparently some here are hanging on it. The good news is that they're all expecting he'll come out of prison with a couple new ground breaking drugs he developed with all that time he'll have on his hands, what with no social media and all.

 

[ET180]

Luckily, I am a shrink only on the net. Both Shkreli and Trump have clearly NP disorder, it is not even a debate. Now if he does actually have a mental disorder people like you could use that fact as an excuse for his behaviour. The truth is, Shkreli never contributed anything noteworthy to society, contrary to his lawyer's claims. That he got a Ph D from the net is laughable...

I don't see anyone here who claimed that Martin got a Ph. D for anywhere. You must be thinking of another discussion.

Helps if you actually read the discussion, hard to have a conversation if you ignore what has been said before.

I read the discussion, I just don't have the time to respond to every one of your logical fallacies. Most of them fall under the category of illogical conflation and speculation / making unsubstantiated claims.

It's fascinating to know that at least some people idolize those who are assholes and criminals simply because other people have done worse and gotten away with it.

I have never seen anyone / anywhere / anytime make the claim that Martin is the perfect person without flaw. Again, you must be thinking of a different discussion. To be clear, I have been making the following claims:

1. Martin has done some good in his life.
2. The media displays very selective outrage. For some people like Martin (and others, but let's stay on topic) the media characterizes them as villains. For others such as a few examples mentioned in the previous post, they tend to look the other way and events that could have been in the news for weeks and weeks get dropped after day one or never mentioned at all.

It's fascinating to know that at least some people idolize those who are assholes and criminals...

No one here is making that argument. This is an example of you illogically conflating my point number 1 above into some sort of idol worship. He's not perfect, but if someone develops (through original research or takes previous development and pushes through clinical trials to reach an FDA-approved drug) which saves or greatly improves outlook / quality of life, I consider that a remarkable achievement and I wish more people were doing that. That doesn't mean that I approve of everything the person has done or that the person is perfect and is a great role model from every perspective.

...by that logic everyone who only murdered one person should be defended as a great guy because, hey, OJ got away with killing two people.

No one here is making that argument.

To everyone on this thread, let's agree on some basic facts that are beyond dispute because there are some pretty huge misconceptions here.

I don't see anyone bringing up Daraprim in this discussion so I'm not sure what you mean about basic facts that are beyond dispute and misconceptions. The rare kidney disease drug referenced in my previous post is Sparsentan, an orphan drug that Retrophin brought to market (might still be in clinical trial) to treat a condition for which there was previously no cure.