The Only Thing I Hate More Than Martin Shkreli’s Face
Martin Shkreli has one of the most punchable faces I’ve ever seen in the news. It’s barely a contest. Smug, unrepentant, so certain that he’s really the hero in all this, regardless of all the lives he’s harmed by jacking up the price of an HIV drug from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet.
However, I don’t hate Martin Shkreli. There are more evil people in the world, and more arrogant, money hungry men in America who are eroding our system to its core.
But this isn’t an article about the Koch Brothers. It’s about that bird-lipped shit-eating smirk plastered across our Facebook feeds that we were first introduced to last year. It’s when the question “What does a greedy sociopath who jacked up the price of a life-saving HIV drug 5000% look like?” was answered.
And I’ll admit, Shkreli doesn’t disappoint. He’s got the look. Arrogant, smug, spindly, unrepentant, pale, and convinced that his wealth puts him above everyone else. If he accidentally stumbled into a casting call for “Slimy Industrialist” in an 80’s action movie, he’d be reciting lines on set the next day.
And he’s so easy to root against.
Every time you see his face in the news, it’s next to a headline of some complete fuckery.
Today, it’s pleading the fifth to every question in congress, then tweeting out after how they’re “imbiciles.” (Actually, dickishness doesn’t make him necessarily wrong on this one).
Before, it was photos of him holding the Wu Tang’s $2 million album, posting selfies from helicopters, and his constant interviews defending raising the price of life-saving medicine, which disrupted shipments and left doctors and hospitals scrambling to keep patients alive.
And then promising to lower the price of the drug after the online outrage. And then renegging on that promise, instead saying that he should have raised the price even more, because “…his primary duty is to make a profit for his shareholders.”
He even admits to playing the villain, and seems to take great joy in it.
In short, he is the Socratic ideal of a complete and utter dickhead.
And so we all rejoiced as we saw that smirk finally wiped from his face as he was led to jail for alleged securities fraud. And then when he was fired as CEO from his two pharmaceutical companies, Turing and KaloBios. Finally, some justice in the world.
However, the more you read about Shkreli, or the “Pharma Bro” (The guy wearing these douchnozzle wayfarers and polo shirt in this photo), the more you understand that he honestly believes he’s doing the right thing. That by gouging patients and hospitals on necessary medicine that’s the only one of its kind, he can use that money to invest in research for future drug breakthroughs. And he may be right. Turing pharmaceuticals does invest heavily in research toward cures diseases that are so far untreated. According to a Vanity Fair article,
“Turing recently announced discounts of Daraprim for hospitals, and Shkreli says that for people without insurance it will cost only $1 a pill. For everyone else, insurance, which he argues is paid for by corporate America’s profits, will cover the cost.”
The Vanity Fair article also mention’s Shkreli involvement in developing a treatment for another life-threatening disease called PKAN, and his personal outreach and assistance to a woman who’s three children suffer from the disease.
However, despite displaying some type of altruistic motives as a positive of his character, there’s also this choice quote from Business Insider.
“Shkreli has been named in multiple lawsuits in which he was accused of carrying out ‘schemes’ to take money from former employers; making ‘false and misleading statements’; deceiving ‘the investing public’; and using Facebook and other social-media channels to harass family members of a man with whom he had a business dispute. Along with these allegations about his professional conduct, Shkreli is also facing an accusation of ‘gross’ behavior in his personal life.”
The “harassment” of his employee’s family was hacking into the man’s social media accounts and writing this to his wife “I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this,” as well as contacting his children over Facebook messenger.
The “gross behavior” would be these messages to an ex-girlfriend.
Although, this quote from the Vanity Fair interview really sums him up.
“The attempt to public shame is interesting,” says Shkreli. “Because everything we’ve done is legal.“
And he’s right. What he did is morally deplorable, but not illegal. Defrauding investors is.
In the end, I hate Martin Shkreli’s face, but I don’t hate him. Instead, I’m just disgusted by him, as we all should be. By raising the drug’s price, whatever his reasoning, it meant delays in treatment and financial damage to people’s lives. He’s put money before everyone else in his life, and it’s worked out for him. He’s rich. And as long as he stays rich, he will never have life-saving medicine denied to him over the cost.
But that’s not why Shkreli’s dumb maw is smirking in court right now, represented by a lawyer who previously defended Puff Daddy and Michael Jackson. He’s in court because he defrauded investors.
And that’s what I hate. The fact that he was surrounded by people who were all doing the same thing. They cheered on the price hike and the profits that it would bring, while messaging back and forth about how to deal with outraged hospitals and patient advocacy groups.
And that Turing is not the first company to raise the price of necessary drugs thousands of percent.
“Between 2009 and 2015, Valeant raised the price of a medicine used to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma from $1,687 to $30,320. Other companies followed suit. Rodelis Therapeutics raised the price of a Tuberculosis drug by 2,600 percent last August; that same month, Turing bought Daraprim and raised the price by 5,000 percent”
In fact, most pharmaceutical companies are raising their prices at 10% a year.
What I hate is that, despite the exact same impulse that made Shkreli’s tool-bag looking face the center of outrage for callously pursuing record windfalls of cash at the expense of people’s lives, we’ll never see the faces of all of the other businessmen who are currently profiting by doing the exact same thing being led away to jail.
Because in the American health care system, that’s not a crime.
