7 ms·

The Journalist and the Pharma Bro

62 points by tempsy 6y ago

uptown 6y ago
Maybe this interpretation is entirely wrong but I feel like there’s a growing segment of society which had been convinced that “celebrity” or proximity to celebrity is worth any other sacrifice. And society has embraced the idea that even if the reason you’re “known about” is due to doing things generally looked down upon - it’s okay because the net effect is you’re now famous and that fame has earned you loyal supporters who will embrace whatever shit you put forth from this point forward. Tired: Shame. Wired: Fame
- underseacables 6y ago
  Reminds me of people who fawn over and fall in love with murderers, and other people in prison for life.
- robgibbons 6y ago
  After reading TFA, it baffles me how this woman apparently liked this man more as she learned more about his anti-social, villainous traits. Her brother's descriptions of her behavior growing up, in combination with her increasing intimacy with this man, only proves how sociopathic she likely is herself.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    It may not be right, but easy to think of Skreli as just some rags to riches kid that took the neoliberal curriculum too honestly.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      I know Shkreli. He's a great kid. Much better than most pharma execs, believe me. This "bad guy" image is all illusion. He had to take the fall for the real nasty people, the real ruthless operators who know how to politick. Analyze Shkreli's mistakes, and you'll notice he was always far too honest and forthright. Good people tend to wear their child-like nature as if it were a shield - but in the big leagues it only gets you hit. His only flaw was he isn't a hardened scammer; the professionals came down on him because he was a talented outsider bringing attention to inconvenient places. Shkreli Did Nothing Wrong.
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        Buying the rights to a series of obscure but lifesaving medications with no real substitutes and increasing their prices by anywhere from 5x to 56x is "nothing wrong"?
        dnautics 6y ago
        Many other pharma companies do this, it is an activity basically encouraged by the fda orphaned drug program. Also keep in mind the dynamics of how people pay for drugs in the us. For the most part the victim is insurance companies, and in a diluted fashion healthy americans forced to buy health insurance. If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup.
        uptown 6y ago
        "If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup." Which is subsidized by the customers of insurance companies that do pay the 56x markup, which are funded by the employers and individuals who pay for private insurance or tax dollars that pay for medicare. There's no free lunch.
        dnautics 6y ago
        Is that not what I said?
        howlgarnish 6y ago
        You're mixing up your concepts here: orphaned drugs are those that would not be profitable to produce without a subsidy. The drugs Shkreli acquired were profitable and still produced, but out of patent (so they were cheap) and without an approved generic version (so there was no existing competition). Legally, it was above board, and financially, it was sensible regulatory arbitrage. Morally, though, it was reprehensible.
        deleted 6y ago
  - not2b 6y ago
    I wouldn't say that; I would say it shows that she probably has mental health issues that "the Pharma Bro" successfully exploited, but these are very different from being sociopathic. Sociopaths are predators, she was prey.
    - robgibbons 6y ago
      Being a sociopath (antisocial personality disorder) does not mean a person is a predator at all. It means they lack empathy, disregard the feelings of others and often lie, break laws/rules and generally act impulsively. The exact description her own brother gave of her.
      - 1000units 6y ago
        Of course it follows that sociopaths are natural predators.
        User23 6y ago
        All humans are natural predators, it's just a matter of degree and socialization.
        1000units 6y ago
        Yes, of course, excuse me. I should have said they are natural high-degree predators. It should also be noted socialization has a direct relationship with heightened predatory behavior in sociopaths: higher socialization translates into better understanding of how to manipulate people. Whereas in non-disordered individuals, socialization fosters empathy and compassion.
  - throaweyprimy 6y ago
    Could you provide sources for “anti social, villainous traits.” Genuinely curious, because I’ve only seen various viral clips, but don’t know the extent of what he actually did to land such notoriety.
    - dnautics 6y ago
      Shkreli is interesting, he spent a lot of effort trying to show the lay investor how to cut through the BS in fda phase trial documentation. Not for himself, really, but for the general public. As someone actively on the side of trying to figure out how to manufacture cheaper drugs, I have a lot of respect for him for being vocal (if in a self-serving juvenile fashion) about how the patenting and fda orphan drug system is broken and captured by industry. I can only imagine he was kind of pulling the same trick with the SEC, but miscalculated as he had burned all of his political capital on the pharma shenanigans.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      In one case, he lobbied the FDA to not approve a drug. Not because it wasn't safe, or effective. In fact it was safe, and effective, and cheaper than alternatives out there. It's that it wasn't -his- drug. His company had the market-leading alternative. So he lobbied against approving safer medicine because it would cost him profit.
  - tanderson92 6y ago
    In my humble opinion, generally speaking, lay persons (and even specialists who have not done a proper evaluation) should avoid psychiatric diagnoses of individuals they casually know, as the implications of such a ``diagnosis'' can cause significant distress.
    - bagacrap 6y ago
      I mean, it's just idle speculation from a semi anonymous internet pundit, so I don't think it should cause significant distress. The article itself is much more likely to have an impact on its subject. Besides, IMHO, we'd all be better off if more people were more informed about, and attuned to the symptoms of, narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy. Narcissists thrive by blending into society as if they were normally functioning humans, being given the benefit of the doubt, so the only way to protect yourself or others is to be on alert at all times, regardless of your clinical degrees.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I mean before Skreli we had the Zodiac killer so I'd say this is a small step up? (Small because I'm sure some people died from no insulin.) Also props to Skreli for tarnishing the brand of bad things. It's so exhausting trying to convince people that e.g. philanthropy is bad, but then here comes perfect capitalist boogieman.
  - takeiteasyy 6y ago
    Assuming you meant pharmaceuticals instead of philanthropy, this comment is right on point. Skreli has got to be one of the most effective activists against bullshit drug policy, in terms of raising awareness (while admittedly causing some relatively minor problems in the meantime). People seem to be misguided by their jealousy in that he was able to do this while making a lot of money, but they fail to consider that this is exactly why he was so persuasive.
    - counterpoint1 6y ago
      Sadly, they probably did mean philanthropy. Many young Americans today have strongly embraced Authoritarian-Left political views and see any person who earns/saves/acquires enough money to give some of it away as a failure of the government to fully tax or control all resources inside the country. Basically if you have a complete faith that the government always knows best, then anyone else (an individual, a charity, a business, a volunteer organization, etc) spending their time or money to solve a problem is a bad thing, because the money should have been controlled by the government so they could allocate it as they saw fit.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        I barely elected the government but I sure as hell didn't elect Bill Gates. A pox upon both their houses
        counterpoint1 6y ago
        You didn't elect Bill Gates... so he shouldn't spend his money to make the world better? I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. Is there anything in my above comment you actually disagree with? It seems like you're just advocating for 100% socialism where individuals don't have private assets. Suppose you have $100. You go to the grocery store and have lots of choices, you can buy basic groceries to feed yourself for the week for $50 and then give $50 to research to a rare disease which impacted a family member, or you can spend the full $100 at the grocery store buying brand name prepared foods. Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to make the choice between those? Are you saying the first person is doing something bad by giving their money to medical research instead of spending it?
- cookie_monsta 6y ago
  I agree with all of this except for the assertion that it is somehow a new phenomena
- asah 6y ago
  aka "just spell the name right."
- brewdad 6y ago
  Given the amount of money that can flow to people who find even fleeting fame via GoFundMe and similar sites, I'm no so sure that segment of society is wrong.
pengaru 6y ago
Wow, I haven't seen/heard/read of ELLE since my childhood in the late 80s, when my sister had a subscription to their glossy paper magazine. Talk about pulling ancient memories out of cold storage... those magazines and underwear catalogs were the closest thing to porn I had access to for a minute there.
- crx07 6y ago
  About the last time I saw it, too -- I had no idea that it even existed anymore and especially didn't know that they could write lengthy articles.
TedShiller 6y ago
Bro is the wrong name for Martin Shkreli. Not sure if journalists understand the meaning of bro. Martin Shkreli is smart as heck.
- cosmiccatnap 6y ago
  So was hitler to a degree, but I don't think that's the point here. Being a trash human is what earned you the title and he earned it ten times over.
zapdrive 6y ago
"Oh my god, how can a woman fall in love with a guy I hate?" - this whole article basically.
- cosmiccatnap 6y ago
  To clarify, this is a man who is responsible for the death and poverty of thousands of people and took glee in that fact. I think it's fair to question the tastes of someone who would openly support that.

62 points by tempsy 6y ago

Maybe this interpretation is entirely wrong but I feel like there’s a growing segment of society which had been convinced that “celebrity” or proximity to celebrity is worth any other sacrifice. And society has embraced the idea that even if the reason you’re “known about” is due to doing things generally looked down upon - it’s okay because the net effect is you’re now famous and that fame has earned you loyal supporters who will embrace whatever shit you put forth from this point forward. Tired: Shame. Wired: Fame

underseacables 6y ago
Reminds me of people who fawn over and fall in love with murderers, and other people in prison for life.
robgibbons 6y ago
After reading TFA, it baffles me how this woman apparently liked this man more as she learned more about his anti-social, villainous traits. Her brother's descriptions of her behavior growing up, in combination with her increasing intimacy with this man, only proves how sociopathic she likely is herself.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  It may not be right, but easy to think of Skreli as just some rags to riches kid that took the neoliberal curriculum too honestly.
  - 1000units 6y ago
    I know Shkreli. He's a great kid. Much better than most pharma execs, believe me. This "bad guy" image is all illusion. He had to take the fall for the real nasty people, the real ruthless operators who know how to politick. Analyze Shkreli's mistakes, and you'll notice he was always far too honest and forthright. Good people tend to wear their child-like nature as if it were a shield - but in the big leagues it only gets you hit. His only flaw was he isn't a hardened scammer; the professionals came down on him because he was a talented outsider bringing attention to inconvenient places. Shkreli Did Nothing Wrong.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      Buying the rights to a series of obscure but lifesaving medications with no real substitutes and increasing their prices by anywhere from 5x to 56x is "nothing wrong"?
      - dnautics 6y ago
        Many other pharma companies do this, it is an activity basically encouraged by the fda orphaned drug program. Also keep in mind the dynamics of how people pay for drugs in the us. For the most part the victim is insurance companies, and in a diluted fashion healthy americans forced to buy health insurance. If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup.
        uptown 6y ago
        "If you're sick and financially needy, there are usually ways to obtain the drug without the 56x markup." Which is subsidized by the customers of insurance companies that do pay the 56x markup, which are funded by the employers and individuals who pay for private insurance or tax dollars that pay for medicare. There's no free lunch.
        dnautics 6y ago
        Is that not what I said?
        howlgarnish 6y ago
        You're mixing up your concepts here: orphaned drugs are those that would not be profitable to produce without a subsidy. The drugs Shkreli acquired were profitable and still produced, but out of patent (so they were cheap) and without an approved generic version (so there was no existing competition). Legally, it was above board, and financially, it was sensible regulatory arbitrage. Morally, though, it was reprehensible.
        deleted 6y ago
- not2b 6y ago
  I wouldn't say that; I would say it shows that she probably has mental health issues that "the Pharma Bro" successfully exploited, but these are very different from being sociopathic. Sociopaths are predators, she was prey.
  - robgibbons 6y ago
    Being a sociopath (antisocial personality disorder) does not mean a person is a predator at all. It means they lack empathy, disregard the feelings of others and often lie, break laws/rules and generally act impulsively. The exact description her own brother gave of her.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      Of course it follows that sociopaths are natural predators.
      - User23 6y ago
        All humans are natural predators, it's just a matter of degree and socialization.
        1000units 6y ago
        Yes, of course, excuse me. I should have said they are natural high-degree predators. It should also be noted socialization has a direct relationship with heightened predatory behavior in sociopaths: higher socialization translates into better understanding of how to manipulate people. Whereas in non-disordered individuals, socialization fosters empathy and compassion.
- throaweyprimy 6y ago
  Could you provide sources for “anti social, villainous traits.” Genuinely curious, because I’ve only seen various viral clips, but don’t know the extent of what he actually did to land such notoriety.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Shkreli is interesting, he spent a lot of effort trying to show the lay investor how to cut through the BS in fda phase trial documentation. Not for himself, really, but for the general public. As someone actively on the side of trying to figure out how to manufacture cheaper drugs, I have a lot of respect for him for being vocal (if in a self-serving juvenile fashion) about how the patenting and fda orphan drug system is broken and captured by industry. I can only imagine he was kind of pulling the same trick with the SEC, but miscalculated as he had burned all of his political capital on the pharma shenanigans.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    In one case, he lobbied the FDA to not approve a drug. Not because it wasn't safe, or effective. In fact it was safe, and effective, and cheaper than alternatives out there. It's that it wasn't -his- drug. His company had the market-leading alternative. So he lobbied against approving safer medicine because it would cost him profit.
- tanderson92 6y ago
  In my humble opinion, generally speaking, lay persons (and even specialists who have not done a proper evaluation) should avoid psychiatric diagnoses of individuals they casually know, as the implications of such a ``diagnosis'' can cause significant distress.
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    I mean, it's just idle speculation from a semi anonymous internet pundit, so I don't think it should cause significant distress. The article itself is much more likely to have an impact on its subject. Besides, IMHO, we'd all be better off if more people were more informed about, and attuned to the symptoms of, narcissistic personality disorder and sociopathy. Narcissists thrive by blending into society as if they were normally functioning humans, being given the benefit of the doubt, so the only way to protect yourself or others is to be on alert at all times, regardless of your clinical degrees.
Ericson2314 6y ago
I mean before Skreli we had the Zodiac killer so I'd say this is a small step up? (Small because I'm sure some people died from no insulin.) Also props to Skreli for tarnishing the brand of bad things. It's so exhausting trying to convince people that e.g. philanthropy is bad, but then here comes perfect capitalist boogieman.
- takeiteasyy 6y ago
  Assuming you meant pharmaceuticals instead of philanthropy, this comment is right on point. Skreli has got to be one of the most effective activists against bullshit drug policy, in terms of raising awareness (while admittedly causing some relatively minor problems in the meantime). People seem to be misguided by their jealousy in that he was able to do this while making a lot of money, but they fail to consider that this is exactly why he was so persuasive.
  - counterpoint1 6y ago
    Sadly, they probably did mean philanthropy. Many young Americans today have strongly embraced Authoritarian-Left political views and see any person who earns/saves/acquires enough money to give some of it away as a failure of the government to fully tax or control all resources inside the country. Basically if you have a complete faith that the government always knows best, then anyone else (an individual, a charity, a business, a volunteer organization, etc) spending their time or money to solve a problem is a bad thing, because the money should have been controlled by the government so they could allocate it as they saw fit.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      I barely elected the government but I sure as hell didn't elect Bill Gates. A pox upon both their houses
      - counterpoint1 6y ago
        You didn't elect Bill Gates... so he shouldn't spend his money to make the world better? I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. Is there anything in my above comment you actually disagree with? It seems like you're just advocating for 100% socialism where individuals don't have private assets. Suppose you have $100. You go to the grocery store and have lots of choices, you can buy basic groceries to feed yourself for the week for $50 and then give $50 to research to a rare disease which impacted a family member, or you can spend the full $100 at the grocery store buying brand name prepared foods. Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to make the choice between those? Are you saying the first person is doing something bad by giving their money to medical research instead of spending it?
cookie_monsta 6y ago
I agree with all of this except for the assertion that it is somehow a new phenomena
asah 6y ago
aka "just spell the name right."
brewdad 6y ago
Given the amount of money that can flow to people who find even fleeting fame via GoFundMe and similar sites, I'm no so sure that segment of society is wrong.

pengaru 6y ago

Wow, I haven't seen/heard/read of ELLE since my childhood in the late 80s, when my sister had a subscription to their glossy paper magazine. Talk about pulling ancient memories out of cold storage... those magazines and underwear catalogs were the closest thing to porn I had access to for a minute there.

crx07 6y ago
About the last time I saw it, too -- I had no idea that it even existed anymore and especially didn't know that they could write lengthy articles.

TedShiller 6y ago

Bro is the wrong name for Martin Shkreli. Not sure if journalists understand the meaning of bro. Martin Shkreli is smart as heck.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago
So was hitler to a degree, but I don't think that's the point here. Being a trash human is what earned you the title and he earned it ten times over.

zapdrive 6y ago

"Oh my god, how can a woman fall in love with a guy I hate?" - this whole article basically.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago
To clarify, this is a man who is responsible for the death and poverty of thousands of people and took glee in that fact. I think it's fair to question the tastes of someone who would openly support that.