Who has the power to decide really how much a life is worth? Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli felt he did. Not too long ago Shkreli bought the rights to distribute Daraprim, a drug that is used to treat HIV as well as Toxoplasmosis. This is a parasitic condition that effects the immune system. He then raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750. He increased the price by over 4000 percent. This price hike was immediately met with outrage from doctors across the nation, people with these conditions and even presidential candidates. When even Donald Trump says that what you did was a terrible thing then you know you’re in deep.

What kind of person would raise the price of a life-saving drug by so much? I could understand maybe raising it to $19.00, but $750? Most of the people who have to take that medication cannot afford that. Oh and did I mention that it’s $750 per pill? That’s right, this guy is trying to charge people that much for one pill. Shkreli tried to defend himself and his company by saying, “we needed to turn a profit on the drug.” Turing should not just be focusing on the profit. The Company should be focusing on creating a better drug, a drug that isn’t 70 years old. Shkreli seems to agree with me, he said that the public doesn’t “deserve a drug that is 70 years old.” He said that the “profit” that the company would get from such a high price would be used to conduct research on HIV and Toxoplasmosis. There’s no point in conducting research if most of the population that have these conditions cannot afford even one pill!

If the medical drug industry is all about profit then what’s the difference between it and the drive behind the illegal drug industry? The only difference is that a person can get arrested for one. And it’s not the one that distributes possibly life-saving drugs. Shkreli “guaranteed” better access at lower prices to patients after telling the media that he and his company had agreed to lower the outrageous price. He did not say how low that price will be, and I doubt it’s going back down to $13.50 if Turing is as focused as “turning a profit” as Shkreli says it is.

Before agreeing to lower the prices, Shkreli had the audacity to tweet “It seems like the media immediately points a finger at me so I point one back at em, but not the index or pinkie.” Such tweets like this one were one of the reasons why he was ousted as CEO of his previous company, Retrophin. This should say something about the way this man may be running his company. If it were not for the outrage that followed the increase in price, he would have left it at $750, leaving thousands of people without medication. Shkreli is scum. That price better be lowered back to at the most, $14.00.