Turing Pharmaceuticals, start-up being run by a former hedge fund manager – Martin Shkreli, acquired the drug, Daraprim back in August. Turing immediately raised the price of a tablet from $13.50 to $750, thus totaling up the annual cost of treatment for some patients to amount in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The drug is been used for the past 62 years to tackle parasitic infections. The New York Times made the first report on Monday and it has led to a burst of outrage in public. The drug is primarily used for the treatment of infants and adults with weakened immune systems; essentially AIDS’ patients. Mr. Martin is 32 years old and is already known for providing wrong information on blog to manipulate medicine’s prices in the past.
Shkreli has stated that the increase in price is to fund the necessary additional research for coming up with new drugs, however, not many are buying this story. In fact, other companies in the pharmaceutical industry have claimed that this is a bogus reason.
https://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/645783632834076672?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association has sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month wherein it called the increase of Daraprim’s price to be “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0P4r9fcy1o
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