Cygnia Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Company Will Lower Drug Price After Critics Called 4,000% Hike 'Unjustifiable' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 http://fusion.net/story/200779/martin-shkreli-cancer-drug-finance-bro/ I saw this elsewhere. It is just obscene. He seems to be the kind of guy for whom it's all good as long as he makes money. A real vulture capitalist. You'll look in vain for any sort of moral compass. It's possible, because vulture capitalists like this guy have worked out that many niche medical products are natural monopolies, with only one supplier. This deal has hit the headlines, because of the 5000% increase .... but it's actually worse than that; because the company he bought the drug from, jacked the price from 1 USD per pill to 13.50, before he jacked it to 750 USD. So that's actually a 75000% increase in 6 years. And this is not an isolated case: I know of at least 5 others of the same kind in the last few months and I have not even been keeping paticularly close count - I am sure there are more. It happens because the barrier to entry for drug production is high, and for niche products like this, there is often only one producer. You need high quality requirements because if something goes wrong, you can end up with a lot of poisoned people. But that means the need to demonstrate safety requires millions of dollars invested and potentially years before you get approval. For niche products like this one, that's enough to stop competitors moving in to compete and drop the price. So it becomes a question of "Pay what we ask or go without and die." Yup. He apparently used company funds to try and pay off investors he had fleeced when his hedge fund went under. A 65 million dollar lawsuit by his former employer is underway. cheers, Mark Yup. This guy's lips are firmly affixed to Mammon's ass cheeks So, article said "When asked on Bloomberg TV this morning why Turing had raised the price of Daraprim by 5,000%, Shkreli replied, 'We needed to turn a profit on the drug.'" Did it used to be one of those drugs that companies compassionately sell at below cost so people could afford it? And he just escalated it to what it should cost? I assume cost of production data is proprietary and not shared with the public. Or maybe he's just devoid of compassion. I'd have to see the numbers. csyphrett 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Looks like he isn't immune to bad press. Greedy Pharma Executive Cancels 5,000% Price Hike The article specifies that this is just whacking a particularly odious, enormous mole in a whole field of moles. Lots of generic drugs are going up in price. I'm not sure what is needed to fix the market, but bad press alone won't do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 I'm confused, if it's an "old antibiotic, decades off patent" couldn't any company make it? I mean, that doesn't make this guy any less of a dick, but if the patent has lapsed I'm not seeing how he supposedly has some kind of monopoly... In theory, yes. But in practice, the two posts under yours nailed it. To make and sell it in the US, you'd need to set up a production line and get it FDA certified. You'd then need to set up distribution deals with your most important purchasers (mostly the big drug distribution chains) and make a series of deals to get your product covered by insurance. Realistically, you're looking at 3-5 years, and about 10-20 million dollars if you already have a production facility where you can switch over a production line, 10 years and 200 million if you don't. For a market with about 12-15000 patients a year in the US (that's an educated guess: I don' think anybody knows exactly how large it is), it's just not worth it. There's a reason there's only one producer left! In this case, however, the guy has bought the existing process, which is already FDA-approved and the existing distributors list, so he's good to go. He'll need to renegotiate the contracts with the distributors, but if there's no other supplier, they're stuck. 15000 patients a year is not much; but without access to this drug, as many as 30% of them will die. Those numbers mean the distributors basically have to carry the drug. cheers, Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Selfies more dangerous than shark attacks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Looks like he isn't immune to bad press. Greedy Pharma Executive Cancels 5,000% Price Hike The article specifies that this is just whacking a particularly odious, enormous mole in a whole field of moles. Lots of generic drugs are going up in price. I'm not sure what is needed to fix the market, but bad press alone won't do it. Great news. But the article is right, this is a big problem in the US: it's not just one sleazebag financier. This is a growing problem, and it's got little to do with the pharma industry per se: these specialist drugs have been around for decades without companies trying to pull this kind of ****. The reason is that for a real pharma company that makes and sells multiple products, the damage to their brand is not worth the relatively small, quick profit off one niche drug like this. But over the last 15 years, we've seen an influx of guys like the one in this case, who are actually financiers. Thier business model is to find a single product that has a monopoly, borrow a bunch of money and buy it, jack the price up as high as they possibly can and skim off as much profit as possible. Typically, what will happen is that when the price goes skyhigh, another generics company will get in on the action, but, as noted, that takes a few years. The new generic competitor can make a decent profit by undercutting the skyhigh price, but of course that price is usually way above the initial starting price. When that happens the financier usually jumps ship at his own company. Burdened with the debt he took on to buy the product, but without the skyhigh prices needed to sustain that debt, it crashes and burns, the financier walks off with a huge profit, and goes looking for another drug to repeat the process. The sytem is like a rachet, inevitably forcing up the prices of all kinds of products. It's not just medicines: this happens throught the US healthcare system. We recently went through a similar process with the special cleaning fluid used to clean and disinfect a lot of machinery like dialysis machines and blood pumps. I should note though, that this is a US problem, not a global one. It doesn't happen in other developed countries. Fixing the problem requires two things the US healthcare industry will fight to the death: pricing transparency and open markets. Cheers, Mark gewing and Lucius 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markdoc Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Selfies more dangerous than shark attacks They qre certainly more obnoxious Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csyphrett Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 The Winston-Salem Journal reported that Deputy Earp saved two toddlers from drowning after their father threw them into a pool at an apartment complex. The father is facing charges. CES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 A "smoking gun" may have been found in the "Happy Birthday" Copyright Case. Update: Judge Rules Birthday Song is Public Domain gewing 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 President Xi Jinping of China is in Seattle for a couple of days. Traffic flow is ****ed up due to security. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Selfies more dangerous than shark attacks And a better measure of Darwinism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Update: Judge Rules Birthday Song is Public Domain It's my Birthday. Let er rip! tkdguy, Old Man and Cygnia 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 And a better measure of Darwinism.Well, the woman and baseball image there is not entirely her fault, unlike the hand grenade and top-of-skyscraper ones mentioned in the linked article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Well, the woman and baseball image there is not entirely her fault, unlike the hand grenade and top-of-skyscraper ones mentioned in the linked article. I'm sure the shark attacks aren't (always) the victim's fault, either Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted September 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 It's my Birthday. Let er rip! Happy Birthday! Have some rep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Green Beret axed for rescuing a child sex slave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Man Builds 'Dog Train' To Take Rescued Pups Out On Little Adventures Cygnia and Enforcer84 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pattern Ghost Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 It's my Birthday. Let er rip! I'll get you the same thing you got me for my Birthday on the first. =P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 The bacteria-fighting super element that’s making a comeback in hospitals: copper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucius Posted September 23, 2015 Report Share Posted September 23, 2015 Plan to honor sex slaves of WWII stirs up furor Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Publication date: 2015-09-21 Arrival time: 2015-09-22 A proposal to erect a memorial in San Francisco to honor an estimated 200,000 women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II has unleashed a torrent of opposition and played into an international drama unfolding across the Pacific. The source of the uproar is legislation by Supervisor Eric Mar to build a memorial to "comfort women," the euphemistic term used by the wartime Japanese military to describe the women forced into sexual servitude for its soldiers. Most of the women were Korean or Chinese. The measure, which the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on Tuesday, also urges Japan to "fully acknowledge and apologize" for enslaving the women and to compensate those who are still alive. The debate has been impassioned and emotional, with two hearings drawing hours of public comment. Backers of Mar's legislation - including a former "comfort woman" who flew from South Korea to testify - say it's a way of drawing attention to a human rights atrocity that is little known in the U.S. Opponents say it fuels anti-Japanese sentiment and unfairly singles out Japan's wartime wrongdoing for public rebuke. No sign of unity The memorial would ensure that "history is not buried," said Mar, a Chinese American who would like it to be built in Chinatown 's Portsmouth Square . He sees it as a first step in a city effort that would eventually include an enhanced public school curriculum on comfort women and annual events honoring them. The idea is "to build new understanding, unity and alliance around (the) common spirit of justice and peace for everyone," Mar said. There's been no such unity around the measure, however. Its opponents include Janice Mirikitani , a co-founder of Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin, who as a young girl was imprisoned in a U.S. internment camp along with other Japanese Americans. She said the memorial would expose an open wound for Japanese Americans. 'Anti-Japanese profiling' "I have seen the consequences of that four-year incarceration and the destruction of property and the confiscation of all our savings, our history, our money, our community and the diaspora that occurred because of the separation from our families," Mirikitani said. "It's not just a monument," she said. "I don't want my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to again suffer from anti-Japanese profiling." Playing into the debate over Mar's measure is renewed tension in South Korea over Japan's wartime atrocities. No bilateral talks have taken place between Japan and South Korea since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012 . South Korean President Park Geun-hye said that before the two countries can meet, the Japanese government must give an "official" apology for its wartime aggressions, especially its sexual enslavement of Korean women. The Japanese government says it has apologized. In 1995, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued a statement expressing his "deep remorse" and "heartfelt apology" for the suffering Japan caused other Asian countries during the war. Angering Japan Japanese prime ministers have also sent letters of apology to former comfort women who accepted compensation from the Asian Women's Fund , which drew on a mix of Japanese government and private money. The South Korean government says that's insufficient. Korean American activists have successfully pushed for memorials to comfort women in other U.S. cities in recent years. Shihoko Goto , a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia Program in Washington, D.C. , said such moves invariably anger Japan . The memorials are well-intentioned, she said, but they "seriously hurt" both U.S-Japanese and Japanese-Korean relations. "It becomes a political football," she said. Such tension comes at an especially bad time for the U.S., which is trying to get its Asian allies to counter potential aggression by North Korea , Goto said. Little of that international backdrop, however, was discussed at the hearings on Mar's legislation. One woman's story Yong Soo Lee , 87, who was enslaved by the Japanese army during the war, flew in from South Korea to testify in support of the measure. In an interview, she said she is still haunted by the abuse she suffered. Once, after she refused to enter a Japanese soldier's room, other soldiers punished her by yanking out her hair and subjecting her to electric shocks, Lee said through a translator. She was saved only because a sympathetic Japanese soldier gave her medicine and blood to replace what she had lost in the beating. That and other abuse have left Lee with frequent pain. She can't sleep more than three hours at a time because of nightmares. She hasn't married and doesn't have children. She said she will be satisfied only when the Japanese prime minister goes to Seoul , kneels down and apologizes for the torture she and the other women endured. Even then, she said, "I don't know if I could ever forgive them." Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer: E-mail: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen Lucius Alexander The palindromedary notes that comfort women seems to be an uncomfortable topic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Hopcroft Posted September 24, 2015 Report Share Posted September 24, 2015 President Xi Jinping of China is in Seattle for a couple of days. Traffic flow is ****ed up due to security. Hopefully for him, they'll let him come home. In many dictatorial or autocratic governments, imhappy underlings of the leader find trips he takes abroad perfect oppritunities to create promotions for themselves at his (or her) expense. Certainly the economy in China (and money is about all Beijing truly cares about -- Marx would have been infuriated to hear about their version of a "worker's paradise"!) is probably making the party elite feel a bit uneasy about their choice in leaders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoneDaddy Posted September 24, 2015 Report Share Posted September 24, 2015 You can't have a memorial to the Kamikaze and then complain about any damn statue we put up anywhere. Burrito Boy, Pattern Ghost, Grailknight and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 24, 2015 Report Share Posted September 24, 2015 Sure you can. Humans will complain about anything. That event was so long ago. The people who were involved, I can see why they're angry. Everyone else seems like they're looking for an excuse to be outraged about something. Seventy years. BoneDaddy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sociotard Posted September 24, 2015 Report Share Posted September 24, 2015 I'm not sure why they're thinking of building that memorial stateside. Build it in Korea or China. The Japanese didn't do that to any US citizens, AFAIK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted September 24, 2015 Report Share Posted September 24, 2015 Seventy yeeeeeeeeaaaarrrrssssss. Seventy! Seven. Ty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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