Parasitical Pharmaceuticals

Martin Shkreli

I think the magazine The New Yorker pretty much reflects the general decline of IQs in the past 57 years.  (Lt. Ripley, Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?  And Ripley was in deep space for 59 years. The answer is Yes, they did drop.)

Their article about the Drug Industry and Martin Shrkeli
Everyone Hates Martin Shkreli. Everyone Is Missing the Point
By Kelefa Sanneh February 5, 2016
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/everyone-hates-martin-shkreli-everyone-is-missing-the-point

... Most of our Presidential candidates claim to disdain Washington politicians, but, on Thursday, Shkreli put that disdain into practice—and helped illustrate, to anyone paying attention, why it is so richly deserved. He is candid even when candor doesn’t pay. (Can there be any doubt that Hillary Clinton, after her own recent appearance before Gowdy and some of his colleagues, would have loved to send a tweet like Shkreli’s?)
Last fall, Trump said that Shkreli “looks like a spoiled brat”; in fact, he is the son of a doorman, born to parents who emigrated from Albania. Look at him now! True, he has those indictments to worry about. But he is also a self-made celebrity, thanks to a business plan that makes it harder for us to ignore the incoherence and inefficiency of our medical industry. He rolls his eyes at members of Congress, he carries on thoughtful conversations with random Internet commenters, and, unlike most of our public figures, he may never learn the arts of pandering and grovelling.
He is the American Dream, a rude reminder of the spirit that makes this country great, or at any rate exceptional. Shkreli for President! If voters in New Hampshire are truly intent on sending a message to the Washington establishment they claim to hate, they could—and probably will—do a lot worse.

This is pretty awful nonsense.

There are two points:

(1) the Health Care system is indeed beyond control at present, and

(2) there are Type-1 Drug companies that actually research, produce, test, and market drugs, and there are Type-2 Drug companies whose plan is to buy niche drugs and raise the prices phenomenally, wasting no time and money on actual research.

This second type of drug company has a Parasitical Business Plan.
These Shrkeli-type Type-2 drug companies find a group of hosts (those suffering from a disease) and find a drug that some other Type-1 drug company developed to treat that disease. They buy the drug and raise the price, and procede to live off the group of hosts.

Notice that the drug involved ideally should not "cure" the disease.
If the disease is such that the drug cures it, then the administration of the drug will "destroy" the host community of sufferers, and that is the last thing a Type-2 drug company wants; no parasite should destroy its own hosts. If it did, it would destroy itself.

This last point is the immorality involved here with that wonderful son of Albanian immigrants: Mr. Shrkeli does not wish to cure illness;
Mr. Shrkeli wishes to prey upon the ill.
That is all the difference in the world between legitimate business and illegitimate business.

Parasitical Pharmaceutical Capitalism!
The New Yorker could not even see that. The writer was too busy spinning fantasies about immigrants making good and doing Horatio Alger riffs.

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