Pharma companies disown Shkreli; Pissed, Shkreli airs their dirty laundry | Ars Technica
Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing, smirked his way through Thursday's Congressional hearing.
This week, a pharmaceutical trade group stepped up its efforts to distance itself from Martin Shkreli, the disgraced ex-CEO of several drug companies who gained notoriety for an eye-popping drug price increase and an indictment for securities fraud. The trade group even made a television ad to try to bolster its image and make clear that it is different—better—than the likes of Shkreli and his greedy ways.
Is it, though? If you ask Shkreli, it's not. And he’s made a website to try to convince you.
On the bare-bones Pharmaskeletons.com, an angry and vengeful Shkreli lists instances of greed, criminal behavior, and other sleaziness of individual members of the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA. Not all his claims are backed up, explained, or accurate. But the site still offers an embarrassing catalogue of bad deeds, which Shkreli told STAT he would continually update.
So far, he’s listed out 26 companies and provided a little dirt on almost all of them. For instance, he noted that in 2004, Abbot Laboratories hiked the price of an AIDS drug by 400 percent, sparking public backlash and a boycott by doctors.
Biogen, he wrote, has built a business around price hiking. Over a decade, the company used price increases to keep an unpopular multiple sclerosis drug profitable, raising the price 21 times and pocketing billions each year. Shkreli also mentions that the company’s new drug, Spinraza, which treats a rare spine disorder called spinal muscular atrophy, has a list price of $750,000 for a year's worth of treatment. Each year after that only costs an easier $375,000.
On the website, Shkreli credits Ovation Pharmaceuticals for teaching him about price-hiking tactics. In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission sued Ovation for buying NeoProfen, a drug that treats a congenital heart defect in newborns. At the time, Ovation also owned the only other drug used to treat the condition, Indocin. The company then raised the price of both drugs by around 1,300 percent, going from around $36 a vial to $500. The founder of Ovation, Jeffrey Aronin, went on to be the CEO of Marathon Pharmaceuticals, which is now a member of PhRMA.
In addition to the list, Shkreli specifically calls out PhRMA CEO Stephen Ubl, who recently targeted Shkreli in media interviews for essentially being the worst of the pharmaceutical industry.
“Stephen Ubl,” Shkreli writes, “don't you dare point your finger at me for the pharmaceutical industry's troubles. It turns out we've all made some unpopular moves.” He ends with, “Look in the mirror. This website took me half an hour to make…”
PhRMA did not respond to requests for comment.