
Martin Shkreli launches website to shame pharma greed, sleaze - AdmiralAsshat
http://www.pharmaskeletons.com/
======
lhnz
Honestly, 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/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/videos)

~~~
ra1n85
Watch the video of Martin engaging directly with a furious HIV positive
person:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVQOZDKlRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVQOZDKlRE)

~~~
jnbiche
Why do you say he was furious? They had a pretty rational discussion.

~~~
davidivadavid
But would you have clicked if he hadn't said "furious"?

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mrharrison
I 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the real world it's common to buy an outdated drug that many people don't use.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.

~~~
throwaway729
_> But what Shkreli did is common practice_

How does this justify anything? Lots of sleazy things are common practice.
Some are legal, some are illegal. Commonality and legality aren't really
strong justifications for anything.

Shkreli may have been singled out in the court of public opinion, but that
doesn't make what he did any less contemptible.

 _> It's just as easy to make the tech industry look like a piece of shit...
but nobody on here wants to state that fact and say how sleazy tech is._

Really? Because I literally haven't seen a single self-driving thread on HN in
the past _several years_ that doesn't contain a highly-voted and somewhat
lengthy comment thread about this.

See also literally every HN UBI thread for the past several years.

And that's just comment threads. Yesterday alone there were two stories _on
the front page_ for most of the day about social consequences of self-driving.

So it seems like people -- especially self-driving people -- _are_ thinking
about this, have a wide variety of opinions on the trade-offs. And when they
believe as you do, often actively advocate for policies that would help the
people whose jobs they might displace.

There's also the fact that technology (both self-driving and drugs) brings
good along with the bad. Perhaps if Shkreli had _created a new drug_ and then
price gouged that drug, the situation might be a bit more comparable. But
that's not what happened.

 _> Now is more important than ever to be truthful with ourselves and how the
world works and not get hyped up over shit_

Or, in Shkreli's case, understand how the world works _and also_ get hyped up
over shit. His business model should be illegal.

~~~
MichaelGG
So you're saying that he should sell the drugs at a low cost, forgoing
profits, for what exactly? Service to the US people? If you want companies to
give up most of their profit just to be nice, then create laws to do so.
Either have a socialised R&D system, or make it easier for other companies to
create generics.

Nothing besides the FDA is stopping a competitor from selling generic
Daraprim. And if it's not economically viable, then maybe the government
should contract at fixed prices to ensure the availability of otherwise
unfeasible drugs.

~~~
throwaway729
This defense of crooks on the basis that the system is broken is a bit
ridiculous. The morality of their behavior is an independent issue. It's
possible that the system is broken and also the people who exploit those flaws
are assholes.

By analogy, insecure software is both common and also often inexcusable.
Incentives are not aligned to encourage secure software. That's a real
structural problem. But those problems don't make credit card theft morally
permissible.

Also, I think what Martin does should be illegal. And also that the behavior
is reprehensible even when it's not illegal. Criticism and action aren't
mutually exclusive...

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wnevets
He'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...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2017/01/08/martin-shkreli-was-suspended-from-twitter-for-
targeted-harassment-of-a-journalist/)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin-
shkreli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/music/martin-shkreli-
releases-parts-of-wu-tang-clan-album-after-trump-victory.html?_r=0)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin-
shkr...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/02/martin-shkreli-
rattled-by-sydney-high-schoolers-who-cooked-2-malaria-pills)

------
nachi
Direct link to Shkreli's website:
[http://www.pharmaskeletons.com](http://www.pharmaskeletons.com)

~~~
rvdm
The code for this site is very much in line with the tone of the message.

~~~
jxi
What'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
The 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.

------
noobermin
Shkreli 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
Congress 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
Like they won't get around it with Hollywood accounting.

~~~
fallingfrog
Defeatism 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
Just control the drug prices like other industrialised nations.

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thomble
This 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.

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tonylemesmer
But see how he does it in such a pleasant manner. Wow what a piece of work. /s

~~~
smhenderson
Oh 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
I 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.

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sna1l
I 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.

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dnautics
Novartis:. 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
Pfizer: 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.

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dang
Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli-
lau...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/disgraced-shkreli-launches-
website-to-shame-pharma-greed-sleaze/), which points to this.

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iaw
Shkreli epitomizes the problem, but he definitely isn't the source of it.
These things were happening when he was in diapers.

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BoorishBears
In what way is he "disgraced"? The article never really makes that clear

~~~
noobermin
The 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
I 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.

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trump2016
Interestingly, his website is blocked at the NIH:
[http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png](http://i.imgur.com/9Pn3LMk.png)

