THE JUSTICE ● fORUM ● TUESDAY, April 5, 2016
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Condemn Martin Shkreli’s price increase of AIDS medication By nia lyn JUSTICE staff WRITER
One would assume that the path to success at a pharmaceutical company would include a degree in a field of science — preferably chemistry. If you are Martin Shkreli, however, all you need is money and a pompous attitude. Martin Shkreli is the founder and CEO of the budding company Turing Pharmaceuticals. He is also notable for raising the price of a potentially beneficial HIV/AIDS medication from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet. This may sound ridiculous, but Shkreli knows exactly what he is doing. Shkreli has a bachelor’s degree from Baruch College and experience working on Wall Street, so he knows how to make and manipulate money. However, when human health is at stake, he is in over his head. By wrongfully increasing the price of a beneficial HIV/AIDS drug, Shkreli has demonstrated his greed and value of money over human life. The drug surrounding this controversy, Daraprim, is one that was patented in 1953 and marketed as an anti-protozoan medication. When paired with another antibacterial drug, a sulfonamide, the combination can be used to treat infections common in HIV/AIDS patients. Daraprim is a nearly 70-year-old drug, and because of this, it was not of much interest to large pharmaceutical companies, allowing Shkreli acquire the rights to this drug for 55 million dollars, a relatively low price. According to a Sept. 22, 2015 Huffington Post article, only 2,000 people use Daraprim each year, because only individuals who are ailed by HIV/AIDS, cancer or other conditions that may compromise their immune system are the ones who can suffer from toxoplasmosis, this drug’s main focus. Toxoplasmosis is a disease resulting from the introduction of a parasite through undercooked food or infected animals, and it leads to several flu-like symptoms. If millions of people across the U.S. suffered from the effects of toxoplasmosis, a price increase would be beneficial for the company because it would generate a significant revenue that could go toward improving the drug — but this is not the case. Since so few people rely on the drug, making it unaffordable is not only hurting the few that need this medication, but it is also hurting the company, because if those that rely on the drug cannot afford it, the price hike is worthless.
When asked about the price hike, according to a Sept. 22, 2015 Daily Mail article, Shkreli callously replied, “If there’s a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle and we buy that company and we charge Toyota prices, I don’t think that should be a crime. We’re simply charging the right price that the markets missed.” Yes, because making a life-saving medication unaffordable is simply fixing the error that the markets missed. According to the same Daily Mail article, Shkreli claims that “this is a disease where there hasn’t been one pharmaceutical company focused on it for 70 years. We’re now a company that is dedicated to the treatment and cure of toxoplasmosis. And with these new profits we can spend all of that upside on these patients who sorely need a new drug.” Shkreli makes an excellent point here; the drug is nearly 70 years old, so the science involved is outdated. With that in mind, why is a new pharmaceutical company suddenly taking interest with the claims of using the revenue to improve the product? Despite the drug’s age, it is still the most effective toxoplasmosis treatment available, and while a cure would be fantastic, patients should not have to suffer while potentially better treatment is still being researched due to the inability to afford the best available treatment Considering Shkreli’s past at a hedge fund, the truth is clear. Hedge funds basically make any investments they deem necessary in order to generate maximum profit, so this could be just another business venture: buy a relatively inexpensive patent and then sell the drug at an extreme markup to maximize profit. This is not Shkreli’s first time buying and reselling drugs for an inflated price. At his last company, Retrophin, he bought and resold a drug to treat a rare form of kidney disease for a 2000 percent increase — going from $1.50 a tablet to $30 a tablet. These buying-and-selling tactics may work well on paper, but when the health of individuals is at stake, profit should not a motivating force. In an apparent — albeit feeble — attempt to increase affordability, Turing Pharmaceuticals has created copayment assistance programs for individuals with private insurance, as well as donation programs to help those who are deemed eligible, according to a Sept. 22, 2015 Huffington Post article. However, even with these special programs or insurance miti-
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gating the cost for users, someone still ends up paying more because of one man’s greed. When Shkreli was brought to a congressional hearing on Feb. 4, he was less than willing to cooperate. The goal of the hearing was to determine why Shkreli raised the drug price so incredibly high and to try to understand his bizarre reasoning. Every question he was asked resulted in him invoking his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination, accompanied by a smug smirk. His refusal to answer any questions resulted in his eventual dismissal from the hearing. In this way, he has made it painfully obvious that he just does not care about
what he has done. If he felt that he was justified in raising the price of the drug and that there are solid reasons for doing so, he would have been ready to give those reasons at the hearing. Instead, he acted like a coward and hid behind the Fifth Amendment for every question but the one asking how to pronounce his name. He knows what he did was immoral, and that is exactly why he cannot give any reasoning for his actions; there is none. He has this insatiable greed accompanied by a wealth that he tries to flaunt at every chance possible. It is just sad that individuals with possibly life-threatening illnesses have to live in pain because of one immature person.
Question the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s professed conservatism Mark
Gimelstein Give me liberty
As the Republican primaries have raged on, Sean Davis, co-founder of the conservative publication The Federalist, has raised a provocative yet legitimate question: “If Trump were running to destroy the GOP/conservatism and pave a path to the White House for Hillary, what would he be doing differently?” In the eyes of many conservatives, including myself, the answer is obvious — absolutely nothing. However, to take it even a step further, there is now overwhelming evidence to suggest that Trump is not, in actuality, running as a protest, anti-establishment candidate, as is depicted by the media. In reality, Trump is running as nothing more than a con man trying to perpetuate liberalism, elect his longtime friend Hillary Clinton and, most importantly, destroy the modern conservative movement. The first, most glaring characteristic that defines the Trump candidacy is how painfully — almost purposefully — caricatured it is. For years, liberals have painted conservative Republicans as wealthy hypocrites who were also arrogant, rambling, hateful, crazy, nonsensical and contradictory idiots. A quick glance at “Real Time with Bill Maher” or “The Daily Show” with either Jon Stewart or Trevor Noah suggests that that image is alive and well. So when Trump — a proud serial adulterer who brags about creating his wealth by buying politicians, uses eminent domain to push old ladies out of their homes for his casinos, rambles on about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it and eggs his supporters to “knock the hell” out of pro-
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testors with the promise to pay their legal fees — wants to represent American conservatives on the national stage, we have a major problem. However, things truly become problematic when Trump actually opens his mouth to talk about anything related to policy. Most of his positions sound ridiculous — they are incomprehensibly awful takes that ostensibly make Trump look and sound like a conservative yet actually just make a mockery of decades-long conservative thought. Let’s look at three issues that are central to modern-day conservatism. For one, conservatives believe in a stronger foreign policy in which America plays a key role in the world. What does the born-again conservative Trump say on this topic? He flirts with the idea of using nuclear weapons against Europe, according to an April 1 Washington Times article. This seemingly resembles the conservative tendency to be strong on foreign policy, but in actuality, Trump’s idea is laugh-inducing, and makes him — and, by extension, conservatives — look absurd and idiotic. Many conservatives also believe in securing the border and stopping illegal immigration. How does Trump show his “support” for such measures? As mentioned before, he centralizes his focus on building a wall and then having Mexico pay for it through remittance and visa fee blackmail, essentially risking potential economic conflicts between Mexico and the United States. Finally, conservatives have long defended the pro-life cause and have sought to create and enforce laws against acts such as partial-birth abortion. So what does the one time “very prochoice” Donald Trump say when asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews at a town hall on March 30 whether abortion should be punished? “People in certain parts of the Republican Party, and conservative Republicans, would say that ‘yes, they should be punished,’” Trump replied, before continuing to say that he himself believed that “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortion as well. Matthews then followed up — “for the women?” — and Trump quickly re-
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sponded, “Yeah.” Trump’s “advocacy” of conservative issues reveals a striking pattern. Specifically, Trump takes an issue that is known to be close to the heart of the conservative movement, and he either uses the language that conservatives typically use on these issues — for example, “we are a country of laws” and people “have to come into our country legally” — or acts as the conservative standard bearer who speaks for the movement, as he did with the abortion question. From there, Trump demonstrates his “true conservative bona fides” to the American public at large and starts adding his incredibly brainless and damaging ideas that few, if any, actual conservatives have ever backed or supported to create his toxic ideological brew. The tactic is clever and conniving, and it has already deeply hurt the conservative cause. On the issue of border security, for example, a March 31 article in The Federalist reports that a Pew Research poll found that “in September of 2015, 46 percent of those polled said they favored building a fence along America’s southern border with Mexico. But in its latest poll, Pew found that support had fallen significantly, with only 38 percent favoring a border fence. When the question was reframed to ask about a border wall as opposed to a border fence, only 34 percent said they would favor building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.” Since Trump’s ascendency onto the national political stage, conservative policy positions — to which Trumpism is parasitically linked — have become drastically more unpopular. Indeed, there is little doubt that other conservative issues upon which Trump has wreaked havoc with his outrageous remarks will face a similar fate. The end results are an inevitable Republican loss in the general election if Trump is the GOP nominee and an inevitable end to the viability of conservatism, which would be irrevocably polluted by the scourge that is Donald Trump. When looking at who Trump actually is, this makes sense. Trump is no conservative — not even close.
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Looking even beyond his lengthy, extensive embrace of liberal Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and his past ideological support for very liberal stances on abortion, healthcare, taxes and other matters, Trump has regularly exposed himself as a fraud on the campaign trail. When Trump is not busy desperately keeping up the conservative charade, he brags about there being “two Donald Trumps” before quickly reversing himself to save face. In town halls, he tells people that he believes the government’s three main roles are “security for our nation. I would also say health care, I would also say education.” In reactionary temper tantrums toward people like Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), who recently chose to endorse Ted Cruz, Trump angrily tried to character-assassinate Walker, slamming him and his tenure as governor for not raising taxes and claiming that “Wisconsin’s not doing well” — usually a criticism made by more liberal politicians. Ask yourself: Is this the behavior of a once-liberal who changed his mind to become a conservative or a con artist? Can a man who tosses around Freudian slips about his love for government-run healthcare and government-run education and his hatred of tax cuts, who parrots false liberal talking points against conservative leaders like Governor Walker and who sabotages conservatism at every corner really be viewed as a conservative? Or is he who many anti-Trump conservatives always thought he was — someone who has a vested interest both personally and ideologically in helping his longtime friend, the unlikeable Hillary Clinton, win this November? As of now, there is no smoking gun that Trump is consciously conspiring with Democrats against the GOP and the conservative movement. But as more stories are produced about Trump and his destructive campaign, it becomes harder, at least in my eyes, to view Donald Trump as anything other than a cancer purposefully planted to destroy the GOP and the conservative movement as we know it.
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