Martin Shkreli on Drug Price Hikes and Playing the World’s Villain

VICE · 4M views · 2016 · 16:30

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Medicine & infectious diseaseMicroeconomics & behavioral economicsMedia, journalism & propagandainterviewnews

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN refers to it as a chance to hear Shkreli's own side of the drug pricing story, including his claim that it is common practice.

What it is

A VICE interview with Martin Shkreli about the 5000 percent price hike on a drug for AIDS-related infections and his role as the world's villain.

Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2016 to 2021.

What Hacker News said

Recommends Clubber · 2017-08 · on “Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud”

I use to hate this guy, then I saw the Vice interview on him. It was nice to see his side of the story. I don't know much about this case in particular. It was kinda sleazy to see the congress question him about his price increases when they knew damn well it was perfectly legal and they haven't done anything to stop it. Shkreli seems to be trying to expose this hypocrisy, but the news loves their stories. Vice interview: [this video]

Cites patrickk · 2016-03 · on “Startups that demoed at Y Combinator W16 Demo Day 2”

Perhaps it would be possible to attack this market using a different approach. The classic startup path is approximately --> geeks hammer out MVP product, get some funding and try to grow as quickly as possible, and either go big or fail. I got this idea after watching the Vice interview with Martin Shkreli (obviously not a role model)[1] Shkreli made the leap from hedge funds (betting against pharma companies) into becoming the CEO of a pharma company, which apparently does research in addition jacking up the prices of HIV drugs (Shkreli actually gives out chemistry lessons on youtube[2]). So maybe some geeks could try getting funding, buy up some underappreciated, undervalued but already F

Cites rboyd · 2016-04 · on “For What It’s Worth: A Review of Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin””

That's basically exactly what happened with Allie Conti in his Vice interview ( [this video] ). Only it was red wine and not tea.

Cites wpdev_63 · 2017-12 · on “DOJ: We Want Martin Shkreli’s Enigma Machine, Wu-Tang Album, and $7.3M”

Whatever he is going to be convicted of, they're going to throw the book at him. He's a terrible person and an opportunist. The problem is he is not the only one like this. In an interview with Vice he goes over the fact that what he did is common practice[0]. Until there is some way to stop this price gauging there will be more people like him. [0] - [this video]

Cites goldenkey · 2021-10 · on “Federal judges or their brokers traded stocks of litigants during cases”

You've got it backwards. Shkreli served time because of public opinion and the things he revealed about the medicare drug pricing [1,2,3] Shkreli's case shows the partiality, politics and bias embedded in our justice system. He was unable to even serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest as very reasonable covid safety precautions despite his crime being entirely nonviolent. The justice system is in many ways the government's instrument of vengeance. You can clearly see this with O.J. Simpson's 33 year sentence in 2008 for armed robbery. Essentially, a new fluff case was used to dole out an improportionate sentence. as retribution for the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.