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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 descr

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
        [deleted]
        dnautics 6y ago
        Sorry you're right, I had the terminology wrong. It's abandoned, not orphaned, and the specific program is FDA NCIE. IIRC this program grants advertising exclusivity (weaker than patent exclusivity) as a carrot to give companies "IP protection-lite" in exchange for re-testing old drugs under the FDA phase flow.
      - 1000units 6y ago
        Why shouldn't a pharmaceutical company with the expertise to identify and acquire an undervalued drug be rewarded? Aren't these precisely the people who deserve to be granted the privilege to allocate further capital? That's the whole point of capitalism, right? That's what HackerNews is all about? If there's some exceptional nuance here, we should explore this rigorously. Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
    - soperj 6y ago
      When he used that money to fund the production of substitutes, and provided it for free to those who didn't have insurance, then how does your viewpoint change?
      - briefcomment 6y ago
        Did he really?
        howlgarnish 6y ago
        And did that happen after or before the media outcry?
        1000units 6y ago
        The marginal cost of an additional course of the drug is negligible. What makes you think Shkreli would have ever withheld it from the uninsured? Lust for death? That'd be an odd quality for a pharma guy, he'd be in the wrong profession. You're thinking maybe mortician or mercenary.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      If you're such a champion of insurance companies, there are literally hundreds of personal injury attorneys (read: serial fraudsters) and their pet "doctors" who deserve to be sentenced to lifetimes of forced labor before Shkreli deserves to serve a second in prison (for securities fraud, btw). Where's the passion against ambulance chasers? Not enough bloggers writing hit pieces on 2nd rate bug-souled parasites? Why not? Why's the gifted Brooklyn immigrant from a war-torn country you've never heard of get all the heat? Because these scams have been going on forever. They're built into the system by the parasitizers whom it protects. It's "the way things work". If you catch onto the grift, if you even come close to it as an outsider, that's when they start making trouble for you. That's what happened with Shkreli. Send him to prison on some unrelated charge, drag him through the mud, then celebrate the defeat of your "villain". And totally miss the point. You changed nothing. You took out a scapegoat for people who are effectively real life caricatures of the imaginary villain they built up for you to strike down. You don't have a problem with Shkreli, you have a problem with our clown-world healthcare system. The real world doesn't run on warm sentiments you for whatever reason don't associate with Shkreli's face. It runs on THE RULE OF LAW, and you haven't even engaged it except in some contorted vengeful fashion against a wholly lawful (and might I say lofty-spirited) young man. Shkreli should be living free right now, and your complaints should be directed to your legislator.
  - sellyme 6y ago
    > I know Shkreli. He's a great kid. He's 37.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      Great kid, top of the line kid. It's a shame what they're doing to him, taking his best years.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    I completely agree with this analysis. He committed the worst sin in Corporate America - he told the truth. And he exposed the underbelly of the American pharmaceutical system. And someone had to go down for both of those things, and it sure as shit wasn't going to the CEO of the larger, far more powerful pharmas. This guy might be a dickhead, but last I checked, being a dickhead isn't a crime; and speaking of crime, the shit they trumped up for him was shit that gets done a hundred times a year, at far larger scale, with much worse consequences than what he did. And what was the end result of Martin's actions, once the dust settled? He made a profit for his investors. Its a fucking disgrace, is what it is. This is why the American people have no faith left, because every goddamned institution has been co-opted by money, and where at least in the past, they had the good fucking grace to deny it and keep it hidden, now they blatantly flaunt it, because they know that not only can you not do anything about it, you're too fat and happy to bother risking anything yourself. Nothing will change until half this country is starving in the street. And even then, I doubt anything'll change.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      Thank you for this brave and fair stand. I for one am absolutely appalled by the virulent anti-Albanianism which has somehow taken root in my HackerNews. It is my earnest hope and prayer that we may open our hearts and minds to these oft victimized people and understand their storied history and potential. All peoples are capable of great beauty and accomplishment - including Albanians - and it strikes me deep in my soul to witness the unjust downfall of such an exemplary young man who had risen above hardship and disadvantage to build something so great. In my mind there is nothing more responsible for the unearned hostility he has suffered than brutish prejudice, and I hope he still has time to complete his grand visions for a future with fewer life-threatening illnesses threatening humanity despite these unfortunate setbacks. Hacker to hacker, stay strong Shkreli, my brother. We support you.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        If you lay it on any thicker, it'll be all frosting and no cake.
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

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
        [deleted]
      - dnautics 6y ago
        Sorry you're right, I had the terminology wrong. It's abandoned, not orphaned, and the specific program is FDA NCIE. IIRC this program grants advertising exclusivity (weaker than patent exclusivity) as a carrot to give companies "IP protection-lite" in exchange for re-testing old drugs under the FDA phase flow.
    - 1000units 6y ago
      Why shouldn't a pharmaceutical company with the expertise to identify and acquire an undervalued drug be rewarded? Aren't these precisely the people who deserve to be granted the privilege to allocate further capital? That's the whole point of capitalism, right? That's what HackerNews is all about? If there's some exceptional nuance here, we should explore this rigorously. Drug design isn't free. That R&D money is coming from somewhere. Where's it come from in your world?
  - soperj 6y ago
    When he used that money to fund the production of substitutes, and provided it for free to those who didn't have insurance, then how does your viewpoint change?
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      Did he really?
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        And did that happen after or before the media outcry?
        1000units 6y ago
        The marginal cost of an additional course of the drug is negligible. What makes you think Shkreli would have ever withheld it from the uninsured? Lust for death? That'd be an odd quality for a pharma guy, he'd be in the wrong profession. You're thinking maybe mortician or mercenary.
  - 1000units 6y ago
    If you're such a champion of insurance companies, there are literally hundreds of personal injury attorneys (read: serial fraudsters) and their pet "doctors" who deserve to be sentenced to lifetimes of forced labor before Shkreli deserves to serve a second in prison (for securities fraud, btw). Where's the passion against ambulance chasers? Not enough bloggers writing hit pieces on 2nd rate bug-souled parasites? Why not? Why's the gifted Brooklyn immigrant from a war-torn country you've never heard of get all the heat? Because these scams have been going on forever. They're built into the system by the parasitizers whom it protects. It's "the way things work". If you catch onto the grift, if you even come close to it as an outsider, that's when they start making trouble for you. That's what happened with Shkreli. Send him to prison on some unrelated charge, drag him through the mud, then celebrate the defeat of your "villain". And totally miss the point. You changed nothing. You took out a scapegoat for people who are effectively real life caricatures of the imaginary villain they built up for you to strike down. You don't have a problem with Shkreli, you have a problem with our clown-world healthcare system. The real world doesn't run on warm sentiments you for whatever reason don't associate with Shkreli's face. It runs on THE RULE OF LAW, and you haven't even engaged it except in some contorted vengeful fashion against a wholly lawful (and might I say lofty-spirited) young man. Shkreli should be living free right now, and your complaints should be directed to your legislator.
- sellyme 6y ago
  > I know Shkreli. He's a great kid. He's 37.
  - 1000units 6y ago
    Great kid, top of the line kid. It's a shame what they're doing to him, taking his best years.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  I completely agree with this analysis. He committed the worst sin in Corporate America - he told the truth. And he exposed the underbelly of the American pharmaceutical system. And someone had to go down for both of those things, and it sure as shit wasn't going to the CEO of the larger, far more powerful pharmas. This guy might be a dickhead, but last I checked, being a dickhead isn't a crime; and speaking of crime, the shit they trumped up for him was shit that gets done a hundred times a year, at far larger scale, with much worse consequences than what he did. And what was the end result of Martin's actions, once the dust settled? He made a profit for his investors. Its a fucking disgrace, is what it is. This is why the American people have no faith left, because every goddamned institution has been co-opted by money, and where at least in the past, they had the good fucking grace to deny it and keep it hidden, now they blatantly flaunt it, because they know that not only can you not do anything about it, you're too fat and happy to bother risking anything yourself. Nothing will change until half this country is starving in the street. And even then, I doubt anything'll change.
  - 1000units 6y ago
    Thank you for this brave and fair stand. I for one am absolutely appalled by the virulent anti-Albanianism which has somehow taken root in my HackerNews. It is my earnest hope and prayer that we may open our hearts and minds to these oft victimized people and understand their storied history and potential. All peoples are capable of great beauty and accomplishment - including Albanians - and it strikes me deep in my soul to witness the unjust downfall of such an exemplary young man who had risen above hardship and disadvantage to build something so great. In my mind there is nothing more responsible for the unearned hostility he has suffered than brutish prejudice, and I hope he still has time to complete his grand visions for a future with fewer life-threatening illnesses threatening humanity despite these unfortunate setbacks. Hacker to hacker, stay strong Shkreli, my brother. We support you.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      If you lay it on any thicker, it'll be all frosting and no cake.

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.