Category: Drugs

Roid Rage

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Marjorie Taylor Greene got in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face to demand a debate.

Seriously, given her background as a Gym Rat, one has to wonder if she is abusing anabolic steroids: (As some folks noted in the comments)

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene aggressively confronted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday and falsely accused her of supporting “terrorists,” leading the New York congresswoman’s office to call on leadership to ensure that Congress remains “a safe, civil place for all Members and staff.”

Two Washington Post reporters witnessed Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) exit the House chamber late Wednesday afternoon ahead of Greene (Ga.), who shouted “Hey Alexandria” twice in an effort to get her attention. When Ocasio-Cortez did not stop walking, Greene picked up her pace and began shouting at her and asking why she supports antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists, and Black Lives Matter, falsely labeling them “terrorist” groups. Greene also shouted that Ocasio-Cortez was failing to defend her “radical socialist” beliefs by declining to publicly debate the freshman from Georgia.

“You don’t care about the American people,” Greene shouted. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?”

………

On Thursday morning, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) criticized Greene’s behavior.

“While I may not agree with @AOC on issues, I’ve never seen her confront a colleague like this,” he wrote on Twitter. “The house was created to debate emotional issues professionally, and it seems some just want attention or cannot handle their emotions.”

Greene is as nutty as a fruitcake.  I do not know whether it is because she is juicing, or if there are other underlying psychological problems, and honestly I do not care.

She is a clear and present danger to fellow members of Congress.

That’s What I Thought You’d Say, You Dumb F%$#ing Horse Trainer

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When an athlete is caught doping, generally I blame the athlete first and foremost.

I make an exception in the case of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, because sane people to do not assign the same level of agency that they would to a human athlete.

On the other hand, I do ascribe a level of agency to Bob Baffert, Medina Spirit’s trainer, and when he claims that Churchill Downs’ decision to revoke his horses win, and to suspend him is, “Cancel Culture.” 

So says a guy who for Medina Spirit is the, “fifth horse in 13 months to test positive,” and before that his, “Horses have failed 29 drug tests.”

And he’s blaming, “Cancel culture,” for his juicing horses.

He’s a complete tool, but I am grateful to have the opportunity to adopt one of John Mulaney’s best known lines.

How Convenient

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It turns out that Purdue Pharmaceuticals conducted an in-depth probe of the Sackler family, but they are refusing to release the results. 

If the results exonerated anyone, they would been in a press release:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, conducted what may be the most extensive investigation yet of the Sackler family, exploring whether they committed crimes or financial improprieties, but the company has kept most of its findings secret.

In a bankruptcy filing late Monday, the drugmaker acknowledged hiring attorneys, forensic accountants and other financial experts to probe members of the family who own the company and profited billions from opioid sales.

According to the filing, the team searched for evidence of wrongdoing by the family, reporting to a special committee of Purdue’s board between April 2019 and earlier this month.

Yet in its filing, Purdue Pharma chose to reveal almost nothing of what investigators uncovered, a decision that infuriates opioid activists and some government officials.

“They’re still trying to cover up the facts,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who has sued the company and it owners, in a statement.

“Purdue’s disclosure filing says it paid its lawyers for a 22,000-hour investigation of the Sacklers, but it doesn’t disclose any of their findings,” she added.

First, the Sacklers decided to become drug pushers, and when they got caught, the Sacklers decided to loot the company before declaring bankruptcy. 

Once again, I think that the best way to deal with this is to apply the Billy Ray Valentine principle, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”

They Should down the Whole Corrupt Sh%$-Show

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Following the payment of massive fines for unethical, and quite possible illegal benavior, the global managing partner (basically CEO) of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company has been given his walking papers. 

The proximate cause is the $600 million settlement that the consulting firm had to pay out over their truly heinous recommendations to the manufacturers of opioids, where (among other things) they suggested that pharmacies be paid a bounty for drug overdoses to boost sales.* (They called it, “Rebates,” but it was a bounty for overdoses.)

McKinsey & Co. is, and has been for as long as I have been aware of it, an evil and corrupt organization.

The sole reason for its existence is to assist overpaid executives engaging in short sighted and destructive policies for the person enrichment of said overpaid executives. (And McKinsey & Co. partners, but that goes without saying)

When one considers the long litany of evil that they have been associated with, mass layoffs, excessive CEO pay, facilitating corruption in South Africa, assisting in setting up Trumps immigration gulags, looting Puerto Rico, facilitating the House of Saud’s frequently murderous campaigns against its critics, etc.

McKinsey is a cancer on society, and if it goes the way of Arthur Andersen tomorrow, it will not be a moment too soon:

Partners at McKinsey & Company voted out the consulting firm’s top executive, Kevin Sneader, this week as it continues to face blowback over its role in fueling the opioid crisis.

The decision to deny Mr. Sneader a second three-year term as global managing partner came in a vote by more than 600 senior partners, according to a company executive. Earlier this month, McKinsey had agreed to pay 49 states a historic settlement of almost $600 million because of sales advice the company had given to drugmakers.

It is highly unusual for a sitting managing partner at McKinsey to be refused a follow-on term. The last time a firm leader was denied a second term was in 1976, according to the company’s internal history book.

Mr. Sneader, 54, did not even make it to the final round of balloting, according to the company executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The final candidates for Mr. Sneader’s replacement are Bob Sternfels, based in San Francisco, and Sven Smit, based in Amsterdam. The shake-up at the prestigious consulting firm was first reported by The Financial Times.

It should be noted that McKinsey is as much a symptom as it is a cause of the ills that it is associated with, and the solution in the long run is greater accountability for businesses, managers, and consultants for the actions that they take.

As I noted over 2 years ago, studies have shown that when managers and holders of capital are allowed to skirt responsibility, whether through bankruptcies, corporate indemnity, or (as is the case of my earlier post) through changes in marital property laws, bad things happen. 

If the mantra of, “Personal responsibility,” and, “Real consequences,” held so dear by Republicans needs to be applied anywhere, it is to the boardroom.

*As Anna Russel would say, “I’m not making this up, you know,

Damn! The NORML Tinfoil Hat Fits!

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One of the under-reported facts in the DNC email leaks was that the alcohol lobby was working aggressively with the DNC to foreclose any move toward legalization:

The WikiLeaks release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is causing quite a stir for Hillary Clinton after some of the messages appeared to show the supposedly neutral committee favoring her presidential campaign over that of primary rival Bernie Sanders.

But the emails also contain a juicy tidbit for followers of the increasingly prominent debate about marijuana legalization.

One message sent to DNC Finance Director Jordon Kaplan shows that the alcohol industry is spending money to get members of Congress to pay attention to marijuana-impaired driving.

………

While the excerpt from a public email newsletter is not exactly a secret like the internal DNC messages are, it is a revealing window into the alcohol industry’s apparent concern over the marijuana policy reform movement’s increasing success.

Pro-legalization advocates have long speculated that as criminalization and stigma disappear, many adults will choose to use marijuana instead of drink alcohol, which could lead to diminishing profits for beer, wine and liquor manufacturers and sellers.

The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America’s website calls marijuana policy a “key issue” and its annual convention last year featured a panel titled, “Everything You Need to Know about Marijuana Legalization.” A press release said the session would cover “how marijuana legalization could impact another socially sensitive product: beverage alcohol.”

………

WSWA represents companies in the middle of the three tiers: Distributors who buy alcohol from producers and then place it into retail establishments where consumers shop.

“Without a similarly robust system, the marijuana market could present the potential for illicit and unregulated activity akin to that which occurred with alcohol prior to and during Prohibition,” the group’s site says. “Accordingly, WSWA stands ready to serve as a resource for states in explaining the merits of the three tier system as a systematic and effective regulatory framework.”

So WSWA isn’t necessarily opposed to legalization. It just seems to want to be the middleman between producers and retail sellers — and to grab a piece of the profits along the way.

So not a surprise.

It’s a Self Licking Ice Cream Cone

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The DEA has decided to keep classifying Marijuana as a Schedule 1 Drug, which means that they claim that it has no therapeutic value.

It also means that a large portion of the DEA’s budget, the part that is driven by its anti-pot activities, remains safe.

How convenient:

For the fourth consecutive time, the Drug Enforcement Administration has denied a petition to lessen federal restrictions on the use of marijuana.

While recreational marijuana use is legal in four states and D.C., and medical applications of the drug have been approved in many more, under federal law, it remains a Schedule 1 controlled substance, which means it’s considered to have “no currently accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.”

The gap between permissive state laws and a restrictive federal policy has become increasingly untenable in the minds of many doctors, patients, researchers, business owners and legislators.

For instance, last fall, a Brookings Institution report slammed the federal government for “stifling medical research” in the area of marijuana policy. As a Schedule 1 drug, it’s much harder for researchers to work with marijuana than with many other controlled substances. The American Academy of Pediatrics has called on the government to move marijuana into Schedule 2 to facilitate more research into medical uses.

Perhaps this determination should be made by an organization whose budget is not contingent on it remaining illegal.

Yeah, but None of the Good Munchies Can Be Eaten

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Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of the leading Askenazi (Easter European) Halachic authorities has ruled that Marijuana is kosher for Passover.

Of course, even if you smoke pot, you still cannot have ice cream sandwiches or Fig Newtons®, how the f%$# do you deal with the munchies:

Getting baked on Passover is no longer just for matzah, a leading Orthodox rabbi ruled, after sniffing (but not smoking) some cannabis leaves recently.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, widely considered the leading living ultra-Orthodox halachic authority, ruled that marijuana is kosher for Passover and can be either eaten or smoked over the eight-day Jewish festival, during which strict dietary laws apply, according the pro-Cannabis online magazine cannabis.org.il.

Kanievsky gave the ruling in response to a question from the pro-marijuana group Siach, meaning both plant and conversation.

Kanievky stipulated that in normal circumstances the plant is considered a member of the kitniyot group of legumes and pulses that are banned on Passover among Jews of Ashkenazi origin. But, he said, if used for medical purposes, cannabis is permitted for Jews from all backgrounds.

Kitniyot include rice, corn and beans. They have always been permissible to Sephardi Jews on Passover, but have been banned by Eastern and Central European rabbis since the 1200s when they were sometimes mixed with wheat. Refraining from the consumption of wheat products is among the central facets of the Passover holiday

It’s leavened grain products, whether wheat, rye, spelt, oats, and barley (the 5 traditional grains) that are forbidden, not wheat products, which is why most Matzoh is made from wheat.

The someone screwed on that bit.

Of course, as any agronomist knows, Marijuana is not, and has never been a legume, and it not typically grown next to the 5 grains, so how it would ever be considered Kitniot is beyond me, though, of course, cooking it into brownies or cookies would be chomaytz.

Earmning a Capitalism Merit Badge

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An enterprising Girl Scout set up shop selling cookies outside a marijuana dispensary:

It’s that time of year again. Time when your local market entrances are flooded with Girl Scouts selling boxes of Samoas, Tagalongs and Thin Mints. But one 13-year-old Girl Scout in San Francisco and her mother made a rather business-savvy decision to sell cookies outside of a medical marijuana dispensary.

On Monday, Danielle Lei and her mother set up shop outside the Green Cross store with the cookies. With the store’s blessing, Lei sold 117 boxes in two hours.

Holli Bert, a spokeswoman for the Green Cross, said that after just 45 minutes, Lei had to call for backup cookies to replenish her stock.

Future venture capitalist, I guess.

Straight from Seditious Conspiracy to Bad Parody

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It appears that the Y’all Qaeda folks out in Oregon have been raising some cash from their fellow travellers.

One of the guys appears to have drunk most of the proceeds:

………

Can we all just calm down? Can we all stipulate that there is a difference between an “ISIS-inspired” crime and an actual terror plot? Can we accept the possibility that a crook might seek to aggrandize his banal crimes with some geopolitical, religious filigree? Can we look for relief in the fact that the seditious claque out in Oregon is coming apart in the most hilarious ways?

Joe Oshaugnessy, an Arizona militiaman, has been actively seeking volunteers through social media to join the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge…Jon Ritzheimer, the Arizona militiaman known for organizing anti-Muslim rallies and fundraising through his “Rogue Infidel” site, went to see Oshaugnessy at the motel and found him drinking there, according to Maureen Peltier, a disabled National Guard woman who claims to be the group’s official spokeswoman. Peltier said Ritzheimer had confirmed that Oshaugnessy had kept the money he had raised through social media for himself and had spent at least some of it on a drinking binge.

It really is the Whiskey Rebellion!

This level of schadenfreude may have deleterious health effects, kind of like how hypotonic overhydration (excess water consumption) can.

So be careful.

Larry Wilmore and Trevor Noah Just Experienced the Comedy Rapture

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Kind of like Norman Rockwell ……… On Acid

Because the crack smoking, peeing in public, murder threatening, formerMayor of Toronto, Chris Farley wannabee Rob Ford has announced his candidacy for Mayor of Toronto:

Smoking crack, urinating in public and threatening murder might each be the kind of behaviour you’d expect to put an end to any politician’s career.

But Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, seems to be the exception to the rule. And if he has his way, he might once again represent Canada’s largest city.

During a Twitter exchange on Wednesday, Ford was asked if he planned to return to office.

“I’ll be on the ballot running for Mayor in 2018,” Ford replied.

………

But after months of speculation, Toronto police found the recording, and Ford was forced to admit that he had smoked crack – probably during a “drunken stupor”. Yet he refused to resign.

Over the following months, Ford’s behavior only grew more erratic, and stories of his previous behavior started to emerge.

In 2003, he called a colleague at a city council meeting a “slithering snake” who “should be back in his cage where he comes from”. A year earlier, while discussing a public meeting on the possibility of a homeless shelter in his district, he asked: “why don’t we have a public lynching?” and he was thrown out of a Maple Leafs hockey game after getting in a fight with fans while drunk.

In October 2013, he was spotted urinating in public behind an Etobicoke public school. The following month, during a raucous debate, Ford barreled over an elderly politician, Pam McConnell, knocking her to the ground. Also during that month, a video was released of the politician in a dining room raging about killing someone while apparently high, staggering and slurring.

This guy is comedy gold, and if he is elected, the people of Toronto are stupid beyond belief.

The Truth, from John Erlichman, of All People

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Over at Esquire, the inimitable Charlie Pierce found this gem from Dan Baum’s book Smoke and Mirrors, in an interview of John Ehrlichman:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

While the Nixon administration is not generally considered to be a font of unvarnished truth, sometimes, after a career is over, the truth will slip out, and in retrospect, Ehrlichman always seemed the most self aware of that scurvy lot.

The Past 48 Hours in Criminal Justice has Been a bit of a Roller Coaster

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Yesterday, I looked out the window at work, and saw 2 helicopters hovering about 5000 feet up in the general direction of Lexington Market.

On closer examination, I noticed that they were both news choppers, as I saw the cameras, and I figured that something had happened in the first Freddie Gray trial.

It turned out that we had a hung jury and a mistrial:

A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter after jurors said they had failed to reach an agreement on any of the charges against him in the death of Freddie Gray.

 The decision, which came a day after jurors told Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams they were deadlocked, frustrated activists who had watched the first trial in Gray’s death closely. Outside the downtown courtroom, city officials and community leaders pleaded for calm, and authorities reported two arrests, but no violence or serious disruptions.

 Porter, 26, the first of six police officers to be tried in Gray’s death, remains charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in the back of a police van.

 Jurors deliberated for three days before Williams declared the mistrial. The decision now throws the other trials into flux.

 Prosecutors chose to try Porter first, planning to use him as a witness at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson. Goodson, who is charged with second-degree murder, was slated for trial in the first week of January.

I can’t imagine that the States Attorney Marilyn Mosby is not going to announce her intention to retry him soon.

Even ignoring the political overtones, if she gives up, she has no leverage at all about getting him to testify against his superiors.

Even so, it’s kind of depressing.

On the other hand, the announcement that “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli had been arrested for securities fraud:

It has been a busy week for Martin Shkreli, the flamboyant businessman at the center of the drug industry’s price-gouging scandals.

He said he would sharply increase the cost of a drug used to treat a potentially deadly parasitic infection. He called himself “the world’s most eligible bachelor” on Twitter and railed against critics in a live-streaming YouTube video. After reportedly paying $2 million for a rare Wu-Tang Clan album, he goaded a member of the hip-hop group to “show me some respect.”

Then, at 6 a.m. Thursday, F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Shkreli, 32, at his Murray Hill apartment. He was arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on securities fraud and wire fraud charges.

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Shkreli said he was confident that he would be cleared of all charges.

Mr. Shkreli has emerged as a symbol of pharmaceutical greed for acquiring a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and, overnight, raising the price to $750 a pill from $13.50. His only mistake, he later conceded, was not raising the price more.

The picture of him being hauled off in handcuffs (above) just made my day. (Does this make me a bad person?)

The comment of the day on this comes from the inimitable Charlie Pierce, “I suppose he could argue for a change of venue, but I think it impractical to delay the trial until we make it to Mars.”

Honestly, I think that it would be impossible to find a jury that wouldn’t want to give him the death penalty for jaywalking.

From the Department of, “It’s About F%$#ing Time”

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The AMA has reversed itself, and called for a ban on prescription drug advertisements:

Drug companies should stop advertising directly to consumers, a major U.S. doctors group said Tuesday, declaring that the ads often push patients to more expensive treatments and inflate demand for therapies.

In a vote Tuesday at the group’s annual meeting in Atlanta, the American Medical Association called for an end to television commercials and magazine spreads that are used to pitch prescription drugs. It’s a change from the AMA’s previous position, which said the ads were fine as long as they were educational and accurate. The U.S. is one of the few countries that allows direct-to-consumer drug ads.

The vote “reflects concerns among physicians about the negative impact of commercially driven promotions, and the role that marketing costs play in fueling escalating drug prices,” AMA Board Chair-elect Patrice A. Harris said in a statement announcing the vote result. “Direct-to-consumer advertising also inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate.”

I am not sure why the AMA has reversed itself, but it is long overdue.

However, given the expansive view of business free speech held by the Supreme Court, I am not sure precisely how one would enforce such a ban.

A ‘Huge Milestone’: Until the Zombies Apocalypse, Anyway

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It appears that the folks in biotech are lauding a treatment of cancer using viruses:

A new cancer treatment strategy is on the horizon that experts say could be a game-changer and spare patients the extreme side effects of existing options such as chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy and other current cancer treatments are brutal, scorched-earth affairs that work because cancer cells are slightly – but not much – more susceptible to the havoc they wreak than the rest of the body. Their side effects are legion, and in many cases horrifying – from hair loss and internal bleeding to chronic nausea and even death.

Imlygic, which bursts melanoma cells open and triggers immune response, can shrink localised tumours but is not proven to extend life, says FDA

But last week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time approved a single treatment that can intelligently target cancer cells while leaving healthy ones alone, and simultaneously stimulate the immune system to fight the cancer itself.

The treatment, which is called T-VEC (for talimogene laherparepvec) but will be sold under the brand name Imlygic, uses a modified virus to hunt cancer cells in what experts said was an important and significant step in the battle against the deadly disease.

Hmmmm…. A revolutionary virus based cancer treatment..

Recall a zombie flick that started with that.

I really hope that the FDA has done proper due diligence.

WTF, Ohio?

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Worst mascot ever!

Only in Ohio could an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana be opposed by legalization activists because it’s purpose designed to benefit 10 politically connected entities seeking monopoly rents:

As a member of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, a collector of antique marijuana apothecary jars, the founder of an industrial hemp business and “a pot smoker consistently for 47 years,” Don Wirtshafter, an Ohio lawyer, has fought for decades to make marijuana legal, calling it “my life’s work.”

But when Ohio voters go to the polls Tuesday to consider a constitutional amendment to allow marijuana for both medical and personal use, Mr. Wirtshafter will vote against it.

Issue 3, as the proposed amendment is known, is bankrolled by wealthy investors spending nearly $25 million to put it on the ballot and sell it to voters. If it passes, they will have exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. The proposal has a strange bedfellows coalition of opponents: law enforcement officers worried about crime, doctors worried about children’s health, state lawmakers and others who warn that it would enshrine a monopoly in the Ohio Constitution.

The result has been one of the nation’s oddest legalization campaigns. It pits a new generation of corporate investors against grass-roots advocates like Mr. Wirtshafter, who deplores “opportunists seeking monopolistic gains” and laments that America would have been much better off “if they would have just let the hippies have their weed.”

A recent poll by the University of Akron shows voters evenly split, but if the proposal passes, Ohio will be the first state to approve marijuana for personal use without first legalizing medical marijuana. That would put Ohio, a swing state, at the forefront of the national movement to overhaul marijuana laws — just in time for the 2016 presidential campaign. Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, a Republican candidate for president, opposes Issue 3.

………

To complicate matters, the Ohio General Assembly has put a competing initiative, Issue 2, on the ballot; known as the antimonopoly amendment, it would block Issue 3 by prohibiting the granting of special rights through the State Constitution. There is certain to be a protracted legal battle if both measures pass.

There is also the matter that the granting of monopolies in the production of Marijuana might be unconstitutional.

We see state monopolies, and state granted monopolies and oligopolies, in alcohol because section 2 of the 21st amendment has been interpreted by the courts of giving states near absolute control over the alcohol trade within their borders.

This does not apply to weed.

The story is twisted:

The story of how Issue 3 got onto the ballot begins here in Columbus, the capital, with Ian James, a political consultant whose company, the Strategy Network, specializes in gathering signatures for ballot initiatives. In 2009, his firm helped legalize casino gambling in Ohio through a measure that amended the State Constitution and specified where casinos could be located.

………

Mr. James said he had “taken that premise and applied it to marijuana.” In early 2014, he said, he began meeting with lawyers and a potential investor, James Gould, a Cincinnati sports agent, to talk about a “tightly regulated system” to make marijuana available in Ohio. An organization called the Ohio Rights Group, then represented by Mr. Wirtshafter, was already gathering signatures for an initiative to make medical marijuana legal.

But Mr. James had a more ambitious plan.

With help from Mr. Gould, he found 10 investment groups willing to put up a minimum of $2 million each to finance a campaign to pass an amendment that would legalize marijuana for medical use and personal use in small amounts; set up a commission to regulate it; and designate 10 parcels of land — each owned or optioned by funders of the initiative — where marijuana could be legally grown and cultivated for commercial use.

………

The backers call themselves ResponsibleOhio. Among the investors: the former professional basketball player Oscar Robertson, the fashion designer Nanette Lepore, Mr. Gould and two great-great-grand-nephews of President William Howard Taft. Each investment group has committed as much as $40 million to build facilities if Issue 3 passes.

………

But perhaps the group’s most contentious marketing effort has been Buddie, an anthropomorphic marijuana bud who looks a bit like a spear of asparagus wearing green cowboy boots and a blue cape, and who has been turning up on college campuses around the state. Critics liken him to Joe Camel, the cartoon character accused of marketing Camel cigarettes to children.

To say that I have mixed emotions about this is an understatement.

My win-win scenario is for Issue 3 to pass, and for the federal courts to strip the monopoly provisions from the statute, but my second best alternative is for the corporate ratf%$#s to lose.

I have no clue as to how I would vote on this if I lived there.

He Has to Be the Most Evil Ratf%$# in Business Today

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Remember Martin Shkreli?

He’s the contemptible greedhead who raised the price of Daraprim by 5500% when he got the rights to it.

After a storm of public outrage, he agreed to roll back the price to an unspecified degree.

Guess which drug has not come down a penny in price:

It’s been two weeks since Turing CEO Martin Shkreli announced he would scale back the price of his drug, and so far nothing has really changed.

The biotech leader came under fire last month for his 5,000% price hike of Daraprim, a drug that fights parasitic infections.

The drug, which rose from $13.50 to $750 seemingly overnight, left the biotech and pharmaceutical industries reeling, with corporations such as Valeant facing a lot of criticism for their similar price-hike moves.

In September, he told ABC News, “We’ve agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit.”

That hasn’t happened yet. A 30-day, 30-pill supply of Daraprim would cost me $27,006 at my local pharmacy.

That boils down to about $900 a pill, which includes the wholesale cost, along with specific pharmacy fees based on the zip code I gave the pharmacy.

So while the price of the drug hasn’t gotten any higher since Shkreli hiked it 5,000%, it hasn’t gotten any lower since he promised to reduce it either. Turing did not respond to Business Insider’s request for clarification about this price.

(emphasis original)

This ain’t business, this is terrorism.

Perhaps the President should consider a drone strike.

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

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The fact that the nominee for head of the FDA has extensive financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry should come as no surprise.

The revolving door has been spinning just as fast during the Obama administration as it ever has been:

It seems to be the season of the revolving door

in health care. The latest version got some media attention, because it involves one of the most important health care leadership positions in the US government, the Director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the case actually seems much more serious than what the media has recently reported.

………

The only fly in the ointment was the matter of Dr Califf’s ties to industry. The WSJ article included,

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, a Washington-based group focusing on medical-product safety, questioned his ties to the drug industry.

‘Dr. Califf’s expertise and his close ties to the pharmaceutical industry are both well-known,’ she said. ‘His ties to industry have been a source of great concern to public-health experts when he was previously considered for FDA commissioner, and those ties raise important questions about this nomination.’


The MedPage Today article noted that Public Citizen’s Health Research Group stated,

‘During his tenure at Duke University, Califf racked up a long history of extensive financial ties to multiple drug and device companies, including Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck Sharpe & Dohme and Sanofi-Aventis, to name a few,’ Michael Carome, MD, the group’s director, said in a statement. ‘Strikingly, no FDA commissioner has had such close financial relationships with industries regulated by the agency prior to being appointed.’

………

‘There are some who believe his relationship with [the drug industry] may be a problem, but most see it as a value-added factor in building a functional, more streamlined relationship with the industry in order to improve the speed with which truly effective and quality drugs and devices are made available, mitigate the excessive costs associated with pharmaceuticals, and influence policies and practices intended to improve health status.’

If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, it should.

What that nameless source just said is that this is the sort of guy who could make the approval of a drug like Thalidomide go through more smoothly.

What Happens When This Doesn’t Generate a Media Sh%$ Storm?

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Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund pharma executive who generated outrage when he bought a drug for rare diseases and boosted its price by over 5555%, has backed down after he got called out by the New York Times:

“Yes it is absolutely a reaction — there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action, I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people,” Shkreli, 32, said.

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York bought the drug from Impax Laboratories in August for $55 million and raised the price. Shkreli said Tuesday the price would be lowered to allow the company to break even or make a smaller profit.

Daraprim fights toxoplasmosis. The infection is particularly dangerous for people who have weakened immune systems, like AIDS patients, as well as for pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

………

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was among those who expressed outrage over the price increase. On Tuesday she outlined a plan she said would limit how much patients have to pay out of pocket for medications each month.

As I noted last night, after Glaxo Smith Kline sold the drug market rights and before Shkreli bought the drug, the price was raised by 1350%, from $1.00 to $13.50 a pill, but since it wasn’t going from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill, nobody batted an eyelash.

Notwithstanding the protestations of contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli, generating unearned profits through financial engineering and exploitation of monopoly power benefits no one but contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli.

This Is a Clear Case of Immoral Parasitism, and It’s Pharma, so Not the Surprise

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You know the story, hedge fund puke buys a pharmaceutical firm, takes an out of patent drug that costs a few bucks, changes the distribution method to make analysis by potential competitors more difficult, and then raise the price by 5555%: (No, this is not a decimal place error)

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

 The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 “What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”

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 The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

 Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

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 This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

 In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

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 With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

 The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

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 Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

 “This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”

You can read the details of his looting the last firm he ran here.

I would note that Mr Shkreli is not alone in this behavior: When Glaxo Smith Kline sold the marketing rights to the drug to CorePharma, the price of the drug was $1 a pill,

Is there anything that big finance can’t make destructive and evil?