‘Pharma Bro’ Tries To Win Over Reddit, Fails Epically


Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli is best known for purchasing the rights to a potentially life-saving AIDS drug and jacking up prices from $13.50 to $750 dollars a pill. In his words, he acted liked a “flippant jackass” on television and social media, but now it appears he’s trying to do a bit of damage control.

On Sunday, Shkreli (and, let’s face it — his PR team) hosted an Ask Me Anything session on the popular link-sharing website Reddit. It didn’t go over well, not that anybody is surprised. After one Reddit user inquired whether the “awful” AMA session was Shkreli or his PR team’s idea, he responded:

“This is 99% statement and 1% question … I think that violates the terms of service.”

But if Shkreli was really interested in following the rules, he wouldn’t have created embarrassingly obvious sockpuppet accounts like “Shkrelidelic,” who asked such hard-hitting questions as,”Shkreli Deli has a nice ring to it. Are you a sandwich man?” and, “Does your company do any advertising that requires voice-overs? I can say ‘Turing’ out loud more awesome than others.”

Shkreli later thanked himself for responding to his own questions.

The best response — this one from an actual Reddit user — took him to task for jacking up drug prices. Claiming to be a doctor working in India, Anandya said:

“Now medically speaking I haven’t yet heard of why your drug’s worth $749 more than my pyrimethamine. Does it improve on the nausea, vomiting and diarrhea? Does it have a folate sparing effect? Can it be used in pregnant women and in epileptics?

“No one’s been able to tell me what your upgrade is or how it works or even if it is a cost saving upgrade.

“Now here is my second problem. If your upgrade reduces the side effects of the drug, why is it much more expensive than prescribing say…. Ondansetron and a Folate infusion to counteract the more common effects. I mean even if I used multiple drugs to achieve this and say bundled pyrimethamine with ondansetron and loperamide and an antacid say pantoprazole and suggested folate level monitoring it would be cheaper.

“So what makes Daraprim better than pyrimethamine and what changes and upgrades have you made to the drug to warrant the increase in price?”

Shkreli never responded.

Featured image by CNBC via YouTube screen capture, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Timothy Bertrand is an author and journalist from Houston, Texas. In addition to covering breaking news and offering thoughtful opinion pieces, he publishes analysis and commentary on classic works of literature.