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Martin Shkreli launches website to shame pharma greed, sleaze
- BoorishBears 10y agoIn what way is he "disgraced"? The article never really makes that clear
- noobermin 10y agoThe first sentence and first paragraph of the article says >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.
- BoorishBears 10y agoI read that, but I was expecting something (new) that disgraced to be an event focused by the article since the events mentioned in that sentence have already happened. While those events could cause someone to be disgraced, he hasn't seemed disgraced in the slightest.
- Vampires123432 10y agoIt's a shill article pumping a false narrative. Hacker News is part of the problem. The headline should read "Martin Shkreli launches website to shame pharma..." The whole "disgraced" thing is a disingenuous slam to send the reader into the link with a predisposed mindset. The same type of play on confirmation bias that Trump employs.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rvdm 10y agoAnd then there's the Wu-Tang thing. His whole story even made him a character Watch Dogs 2.
- mrharrison 10y agoI know I'm going to get shit for this. But what Shkreli did is common practice, and us disgracing him is Liberals using Alternative Facts. Where in the real world it's common to buy an outdated drug that many people don't use. Raise the price on it and try to innovate the drug into being a better drug, by using the increased profits. He just got himself into trouble because he doesn't know how to handle himself on twitter. I urge people to research this and look further into it, instead of having quick answers. There's a reason he wasn't convicted of anything. Sure, hike pricing drugs does sound evil and I get why people are mad. We want to live in a world where everybody has access to affordable healthcare, but sometimes the way things work aren't always simply put. It's just as easy to make the tech industry look like a piece of shit. Especially with AI and self-driving cars. How dare Gooogle and YC take away jobs from hard-working middle-class Americans. It's almost worse, instead of price gouging, tech is going to take away jobs of many if not all Americans in the near future, but nobody on here wants to state that fact and say how sleazy tech is. Now is more important than ever to be truthful with ourselves and how the world works and not get hyped up over shit, until we understand the whole process. Let's problem solve instead of name call and understand the process of things. Like how YC is testing a universal wage for people in Oakland.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoFantasy. That guy isn't creating drugs. He's just a shyster trying to imitate real labs. But without any lab of his own, it was just a scam really.
- mrharrison 10y agoHow do you know he isn't creating drugs? When I personally met the people that were going to help him innovate this drug.
- jjawssd 10y agoHe is parroting what he wants to believe, not what people actually do
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- tonylemesmer 10y agoBut see how he does it in such a pleasant manner. Wow what a piece of work. /s
- smhenderson 10y agoOh I agree but if he's able to put up some documentation/proof that his claims are valid than I'm OK with how and by whom it's delivered. But maybe that's too much to hope and he's just slinging mud. Hard to tell without digging into the details but the article does say this: 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. I'm hoping Ars wouldn't have published the article at all unless they put at least some stock in his claims.
- imglorp 10y agoI expect each of the dirts will trigger a libel suit in a few days, even if he did post facts with documentation. He might be able to win most of them, but he's going to spend a mountain of cash just defending them.
- tdb7893 10y agoI get the sense that he is mad because he got hit for something literally the whole industry does. I do find his obvious douchebaggery less infuriating than most pharma companies that hide their douchebaggery by just lying to you
- dikdik 10y agoIf he did it in a pleasant manner, like every other pharma exec, there would not be this level of outrage about what he did. Are you ok with being price-gouged on your healthcare as long as the pharma companies say "please" and "thank you"?
- nachi 10y agoDirect link to Shkreli's website: http://www.pharmaskeletons.com http://www.pharmaskeletons.com
- rvdm 10y agoThe code for this site is very much in line with the tone of the message.
- jxi 10y agoWhat's wrong with the code? It's just HTML. Do you expect some NodeJS responsive React Web 3.0 app for this? I think the format, layout and code for the website is entirely appropriate for this.
- rvdm 10y agoThe site is exactly what it should be. Politics aside, both the code and content are just straight to the point which I find very refreshing in an age of all React everything where every step along the way needs approval from a bunch of different people before anything gets done. He sat down and said what he needed to say. At least he's not afraid to speak his mind.
- lhnz 10y agoHonestly, I quite like Shkreli. His YouTube videos are helpful [0], and he is transparently offensive rather than secretly so. I'm much more turned-off by people that hide in the shadows. Shkreli might exploit the system, but he'll do so in a way that makes it patently obvious which doors need to be closed, and he'll make a joke of it while he does it. Seems to me he's the George Hotz of the pharmaceuticals industry. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...
- mistermann 10y agoI do too, I've watched him just live streaming hanging out with friends on youtube quite a few times, he's definitely a shit disturber but I actually think he's a very smart guy, and I'm not even sure how evil he is.
- BoorishBears 10y agoI also like that he's knowledgable on many on the subjects on which he speaks, half the people I've spoken to that "hate him" have no idea why other than he made a low volume drug expensive (never mind any of the details behind it)
- dasboth 10y agoI'm curious, what were the details that made that story sound less bad than it does at first glance?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lionyo 10y agoHe raised the price of Daraprim for insurers, and allows patients to receive it for free if they can't afford it
- maxerickson 10y ago
- thomble 10y agoThis man could be a folk hero if he continues down this path. It's fascinating that people think Shkreli is a villain, when all he did was put an actual face on how a broken facet of healthcare works in the United States.
- trump2016 10y agoInterestingly, his website is blocked at the NIH: http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png
- noobermin 10y agoShkreli very much reminds me of Yiannopoulos; they are both trolls in real-life, and their only strength is yielded from driving up notoriety in the media and online and staying relevant due to that. Yiannopoulos does however have what looks like a stable platform (Breitbart), but this article implies that Shkreli doesn't, so if people really want to oppose him, the best way is to ignore him and let his ejection from the Pharma circle be complete.
- fallingfrog 10y agoCongress could solve this problem tomorrow with the stroke of a pen, but they won't. Just set a ceiling on what their profit margins can be, like a public utility. Done.
- fnord123 10y agoLike they won't get around it with Hollywood accounting.
- aeze 10y agoThat's definitely not a good reason to not do it.
- matthewbauer 10y agoHow do other countries prevent this?
- fallingfrog 10y agoDefeatism is the reaction they're hoping for, you know. We actually do have the power to make changes happen despite what we've been told.
- fnord123 10y agoJust control the drug prices like other industrialised nations.
- Vampires123432 10y agolol... I can't believe you're being downvoted. Hacker news has become totally cucked.
- keyboardhitter 10y agoThis comment adds nothing to the conversation - please stop. This is not /pol/.
- Vampires123432 10y agoI don't even know what pol is. Your comment adds nothing to the conversation. My comment is pointing out that, "Hey, sometimes a counterpoint can be correct! Try stepping outside of your echo chamber every once in a while!"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account for continuing to violate the guidelines after we've asked you to stop. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13472882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13472882 and marked it off-topic.
- wnevets 10y agoHe's an attention whore, please stop giving him what he wants. [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/01/08/martin-shkreli-was-suspended-from-twitter-for-targeted-harassment-of-a-journalist/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/01... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin-shkreli-releases-parts-of-wu-tang-clan-album-after-trump-victory.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin-shkreli... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin-shkreli-rattled-by-sydney-high-schoolers-who-cooked-2-malaria-pills https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin-shkr...
- sna1l 10y agoI feel like it is a classic political move to put a face to an issue like this. California, seemed to do the same thing, by having patrons ask for water at restaurants. Obviously, the benefits of this weren't just that the directly saved water, but the indirectly saved water of making people think twice about water usage. Regardless, I think most people like thinking in the concrete rather than the abstract, which makes it easy to shit on a specific person like Martin Shkreli, instead of the whole pharma industry.
- iaw 10y agoShkreli epitomizes the problem, but he definitely isn't the source of it. These things were happening when he was in diapers.
- dang 10y agoUrl changed from http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli-launches-website-to-shame-pharma-greed-sleaze/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli-lau..., which points to this.
- dnautics 10y agoNovartis:. Creates a huge "nonprofit" foundation in San Diego, claims tax deduction for research and transfers IP to self... Until the IRS intervenes. At some point the professor running the place gets embroiled in two mini-scandals about possibly fraudulent science perpetrated by postdocs in the lab and is asked to leave so he can focus on more closely monitoring his employees. They did some pretty cool structural biology, though.
- dnautics 10y agoPfizer: triggers a constitutional crisis by bribing a city to declare low and middle class neighborhoods as blighted to develop a factory, case goes to supreme Court; despite winning reneged on promise to build factory. Then shutters a factory in Lansing, forcing employees to move to the more expensive San Diego, then lays off 2/3 of their site there, too.