NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martin Shkreli, known for once hiking the price of a life-saving drug more than 4,000%, cannot return to the pharmaceutical industry after a federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld his lifetime ban.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said a lower court judge acted properly in imposing the ban and ordering Shkreli to repay $64.6 million because of his antitrust violations.
The case had been brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), joined by New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Shkreli, 40, became notorious and gained the sobriquet “Pharma Bro” when, as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals in 2015, he raised the price of the newly-acquired antiparasitic drug Daraprim overnight to $750 per tablet from $17.50.
Well he claims he actually gave the medication for free to anyone who was uninsured. His argument was that the $750 price was a middle finger to the insurance industry and to draw attention to gouging for pharmaceuticals in general. He believes Big Pharma made an example of him for this unwanted exposure.
I think it goes both ways. He’s an absolute sham and deserves the lifetime ban, but I’m also sure that Big Pharma wanted to extinguish his fire before they got caught up in the flames. Of course with the amount of weight they pull at all levels of the government we may never see the day pharmaceutical companies are held completely responsible for the damages they’ve caused.