My Lunch With Shkreli: What We Should Learn From Pharma's Latest Monster
You already hate Martin Shkreli, the bratty former hedge fund manager who raised the price on a drug to treat infections in AIDS patients by 5,000%. Now it’s time to get to know him.
I’m not saying you should get to know Shkreli because you’ll like him in the end. You might hate him more. He is very smart, but also callow and possibly sociopathic. (He prefers “iconoclast.”) Yet much of what has been written about him this past week is unrecognizable. He’s not a bro or some big time executive but a small player with tons of bluster who took Wall Street’s ideas about drug pricing to their frightening extreme. He became a target for derision not because of what he did but because he was so cartoonishly easy to parody, essentially fouling the cover-up. Other companies have jacked up prices just as much as his firm, Turing, with no consequences other than soaring stock prices. Hillary Clinton’s reforms? It’s unlikely they’d make a difference. Shkreli, by the way, is unrepentant, and says he thinks he’s a great CEO.
Hey, check out all the research scientist jobs. Post your resume today!
I’m not saying you should get to know Shkreli because you’ll like him in the end. You might hate him more. He is very smart, but also callow and possibly sociopathic. (He prefers “iconoclast.”) Yet much of what has been written about him this past week is unrecognizable. He’s not a bro or some big time executive but a small player with tons of bluster who took Wall Street’s ideas about drug pricing to their frightening extreme. He became a target for derision not because of what he did but because he was so cartoonishly easy to parody, essentially fouling the cover-up. Other companies have jacked up prices just as much as his firm, Turing, with no consequences other than soaring stock prices. Hillary Clinton’s reforms? It’s unlikely they’d make a difference. Shkreli, by the way, is unrepentant, and says he thinks he’s a great CEO.
Hey, check out all the research scientist jobs. Post your resume today!