Top 5 Facts about Martin Shkreli

Shkreli began his rise to supervillain-caliber infamy in September 2015 when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the rights to the life-saving drug Daraprim, and increased its list price by 5000%. The drug is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection common in AIDS and cancer patients. Though this caused some major backlash with news outlets and public figures across the world criticizing it as an amoral business move, the price hike didn’t actually break any laws. Someone once asked him if he’d do anything different if he could go back in time. As a CEO, he said, it’s his duty to maximize profits for shareholders, and more profits also allows him to invest in research and development. But we’ll come back to that.

In a bizarre move, the newly-notorious pharmaceutical tycoon bought the only copy of the Wu Tang album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” for $2 million dollars. This managed to tarnish his reputation even more when he refused to release the hugely popular rap group’s album to the public. This venture also landed him a lawsuit, when unlicensed artwork from the album appeared in an article without the artists permission. Martin also got into a heated twitter war with one of the Wu Tang Clan’s rappers Ghostface Killah, threatening to remove the rapper from the album and “erase him from the record books of rap”.

From rap gods to political pundits, Martin has a way of aggravating just about everyone. He donated $2700 to Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign and Bernie responded by donating the money to a local HIV clinic. According to Shkreli, Democrats have rejected $50,000 of his donations. Even consummate capitalist Donald Trump spoke out against the so-called pharma bro, saying he looked like a spoiled brat. Shkreli responded to Trump’s feedback with a smile, asserting that his company is now dedicated to researching a better cure to the parasitic infection. Shrekli claimed that he hoped donating to Sanders’ campaign might get him some face time with the senator so that he could tell the senator…

The price hike caused some serious outrage all over the political spectrum, but Shkreli contends that it’s all for a good cause. Shkreli claims that Turing spends 60% of its profits to research and development versus the industry standard of 15%, and that that includes finding a better cure for toxoplasmosis. This is good news given that the seventy year old drug causes many unwanted side effects such as vomiting, headaches, and insomnia to name a few. According to him, nobody else wants to do this; the biggest pharmaceutical companies prefer to spend their money on marketing existing drugs than on creating new ones. Turing Pharmaceutical’s current leadership maintains the rationale of this strategy and back him up when...

Shkreli claims that toxoplasmosis patients by-and-large aren’t affected by the price hike, and that it’s the insurance companies who it will end up costing, and he has no problem taking money from the insurance industry. Internal documents revealed that initially, hospitals and patients reported difficulty in accessing the drug because of the hikes.But Shkreli says that by making smaller formats for hospitals and capping patients’ copayments at $10 per month, those problems were resolved.The company also provides the drug for a penny a pill to the US government discount program.



So, what do you think? Is Martin a diabolical profiteer or some kind of misunderstood vigilante? And have you ever watched his live YouTube streams? For more heroic top 10s and reviled top 5s, be sure to subscribe to Watchmojo.com