Hedge Fund Guy Buys AIDS Drug Company, Jacks Price From $13.50 Per Pill To $750

Martin Shkreli

Former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical businessman, 32 year old Martin Shkreli, recently purchased the rights to a 62-year-old drug, Daraprim, used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections like AIDS and cancer patients experience.

Shkreli promptly raised the price overnight from $13.50 per tablet to a whopping $750.

That's a 5,500 percent increase for the exact same pill.

From Raw Story:

Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago.

“This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business,” Shkreli explained, saying that many patients use the drug for far less than a year and that the new price is similar to other drugs used for rare diseases.

Shrkeli also defended his small pharmaceutical company saying, “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - you buy a company, you get to charge whatever you want for the product.

But this is just GROSS.