Outrageous Big Pharma greed on parade as $1 pill for treating fatal infection suddenly skyrockets to $750 PER PILL!

Tuesday, September 22, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Big Pharma profiteering, Turing Pharmaceuticals, price gouging

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(NaturalNews) The total greed of Big Pharma is on parade this week as a company called Turing Pharmaceuticals took ownership of a lifesaving medication that treats parasitic infections like malaria. The pill -- mostly purchased by AIDS and cancer patients -- used to cost $1 each. But now, thanks to Turing Pharmaceuticals and its profiteering CEO Martin Shkreli, each pill will cost you $750.

Remarkably, The New York Times even covered the story, reporting, "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."

This drug was priced at just $1 a few years ago. It went up to $13.50 over the last decade or so, and now has spiked to $750 per pill. This means a single treatment course could cost more than buying a home.



This is all explained by the "Taiwanese animators" in this highly educational animated short video:

Big Pharma greed on parade and out of control

Why is Turing Pharmaceuticals charging $750 a pill? Because they CAN. Like every other drug company in the world, they're going to gouge the consumer and extract the maximum dollars possible. Big Pharma is really about the profits, you see, and not at all interested in "helping humanity" as their ridiculous TV ads claim.

Is it any wonder that 1 out of every 5 dollars spent in the U.S. economy is spent on "sick care" costs? Check out the following chart that shows how different countries spend money in different ways. Care to guess which country spends the most on health care? The United States by a long shot!



This Daraprim pill, by the way, probably costs about 20 cents to manufacture, and it's probably manufactured in India or Puerto Rico, where most drugs are made and then exported to the USA. How does Turing Pharmaceuticals justify $750 a pill? According to the pharma douchebag Martin Shkreli, it's "a bargain for health insurers" at $750.

A bargain compared to what? A bargain compared to all the other monopoly-priced drugs, he says. And that's how insane the monopoly has become, by the way: When a pill that sells for $750 is called "a bargain," you know you're living under a monopolistic profiteering medical cartel. And it is, truly, a protected cartel. Who's protecting it? The corrupt government, of course... starting with the FDA.

Anti-parasite medicine grows for free in the Cinchona tree

Mother Nature already provides highly effective medicines for treating parasitic infections. In fact, the original cure for malaria -- known as quinine -- comes from the cinchona tree.

This tree, like many trees, provides powerful medicine at zero cost, thanks to Mother Nature. While Big Pharma is gouging consumers with outrageous prices, Mother Nature provides medicine for free in the form of medicinal plants (many weeds), medicinal foods and medicinal tree bark.

Many trees produce powerful medicine. The bark of the cinnamon tree, for example, produces cinnamon, a powerful blood sugar regulator favored by diabetics.

A powerful Chinese Medicine ingredient for boosting kidney strength and treating back pain comes from the Eucommia tree. It's known as Eucommia Bark, or du zhong in Chinese.

All around the world, Mother Nature provides safe, affordable medicine for free. Big Pharma, meanwhile, price gouges the world, economically punishing everyone while greedily hiking pill prices 5000% or more just because they can.

Turing Pharmaceuticals is making the case for natural medicine

If there was ever a case to be made for natural medicine, Turing Pharmaceuticals just nailed it. People who use natural medicine instead of Big Pharma medicine have access to safe, affordable, effective medicines created by Mother Nature.

Medicinal herbs, essential oils and healing foods are available for virtually nothing. Many can be grown yourself for free. The plants synthesize the medicines without charge, and there are no royalties or patents to think of.

Is it any wonder our nation is going broke with "sick care" costs? Turing Pharmaceuticals wants you to pay the price of a house for a single course of treatment for a parasite infection. The fact that these pills target AIDS and cancer patients makes it even more of a gross ethical violation.

Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. This is the same greed-driven industry that injects our children with toxic vaccines that cause autism (and then buries the evidence at the CDC); that runs a price monopoly on pharmaceuticals in the USA; that pays generic drug companies to NOT release lower-priced drugs onto the market; that buys off the FDA and government regulators; that routinely commits scientific fraud to make useless drugs appear effective... and that engages in a long list of felony crimes including bribery and price fixing.

Natural medicine is safe, affordable, and non-patentable. This means it cannot be controlled by greedy corporations and their patent attorneys. This is why 80% of the world's population relies on plant-based medicine, rejecting the absurd pharmaceutical monopoly system that has economically enslaved the U.S. population (and is driving cities, states and households bankrupt).

Martin Shkreli a former hedge fund manager

Getting into the total lack of ethics of these people, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli is -- surprise! -- a former hedge fund manager.

In other words, he has gone from gouging people's money for investments to gouging people's money for medicine. (Remember: this is all LEGAL theft in America.)

As the New York Times reports:

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.

So hold on. He was shorting the stocks of drug companies, then urging the FDA to withhold approval for those drugs? It sort of blows away any claim of being "ethical," doesn't it? As long as Shkreli is making money, he will either price hike a drug by 5000% or more, or urge the FDA to reject the drug... whichever one makes him the most money!

Take a look at this guy's face. I don't know about you, but there's something creepy about this guy that just smacks of a pathological psycho in my opinion... almost like if he weren't hawking hedge funds or selling pharmaceuticals, he'd be running a child kidnapping ring or selling baby parts from Planned Parenthood. Hey, whatever makes the money for him, right? He literally looks like a villain from a Hollywood blockbuster movie.



OMG! I just realized who this guy looks like! He's Loki, the evil multi-dimensional villain from The Avengers movies! Just like Loki, Martin Shkreli gains money and power off of other people's suffering...



Here's Loki battling with Thor over the fate of humanity:

Hillary Clinton goes off on Turing Pharmaceuticals, promises price controls

In response to all this, Hillary Clinton did something brilliant. For her, that's really something. Check out this comment she tweeted:

Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on. -H



That tweet sent biotech / pharma stocks tumbling. As this Bloomberg article reported:

Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager who is now chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, was called out by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Clinton tweeted that she would soon release a plan to combat the high cost of prescription drugs. Biotechnology stocks fell after her comment.

Clinton’s comment on Twitter sent the 144-member Nasdaq Biotechnology Index down 4.7 percent to 3,556.58 at 1:08 p.m. in New York, the biggest intraday drop since Aug. 24. Health-care stocks were the worst-performing subgroup on the broader Nasdaq index.

"I’m going to address them this week, starting with how we’re going to try to control the cost of skyrocketing prescription drugs," said Clinton in the Bloomberg article. So Hillary Clinton is now claiming she's going to hammer away at the very corporations that fund her election campaigns? Gimmie a break.

The idea that Hillary Clinton, the ultimate big money insider, is going to hurt the profits of Big Pharma is ludicrous. Her tweet, however, is still impressive to witness, even if she doesn't mean it.

"Blaming a biotech sector drop on a tweet is one thing, but investors should remember that Hillary Clinton is set to lay out her plan on prescriptions drugs momentarily. At issue is whether the government will be able to negotiate with drug companies over their pricing," wrote 247WallSt.com.

What they didn't report -- and almost no one in America remembers -- is how George W. Bush made sure the U.S. government was not allowed to negotiate prices with Big Pharma, locking in the drug industry's highest prices and profits. Yep, is anyone surprised that a Republican conspired with Big Pharma to engage in systematic profiteering and price gouging? (Republicans are the big pushers of Monsanto and the biotech industry, by the way, while Hillary Clinton is so neck-deep up Monsanto's rear end that she's known as the "Bride of Frankenfood.")

It's all business as usual in other words.

Monopolistic price gouging is the entire business model of Big Pharma

It's worth noting in all this that Martin "Loki" Shkreli isn't alone. Price gouging and monopolistic profiteering is the entire business model of the pharmaceutical industry.

Here are some shocking facts you might not have known about the industry:

FACT #1: Most Big Pharma funding comes from taxpayers via NIH grants.

FACT #2: Most Big Pharma expenditures are spent on marketing, not R&D.

FACT #3: Google actively conspires with Big Pharma and the FDA to block pharmacy ads from Canada, where drugs can be purchased at a fraction of the U.S. price.

FACT #4: People all over the world pay a fraction of the U.S. price for the exact same pharmaceuticals, often as little as 2% of the U.S. price in places like India.

FACT #5: The FDA protects a monopoly of drug prices in the U.S., making sure consumers don't have access to cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico. People who bring in legal, FDA-approved drugs from Canada are arrested and prosecuted as "drug smugglers."

FACT #6: Even while the FDA bans drug purchases from Canada or Mexico, most of the pharmaceuticals sold in U.S. pharmacies are actually manufactured in India or Puerto Rico!

FACT #7: Most pharmaceuticals don't treat any diseases in the first place. They treat SYMPTOMS, guaranteeing repeat business by making sure the underlying health condition never gets cured.

FACT #8: Most pharmaceuticals cause unintended side effects and organ damage that leads to yet more diseases, requiring yet more pharmaceuticals that generate yet more profits for Big Pharma.

FACT #9: Cancer drugs (chemotherapy) cause cancer! And AIDS drugs cause the kind of symptoms that are often diagnosed as AIDS. Many drugs actually cause the very conditions they claim to treat. Some cause other conditions, too, such as antidepressant drugs causing diabetes.

FACT #10: The corruption and collusion between the pharmaceutical industry and the U.S. government is extreme. The U.S. medical system is an example of runaway corporate fascism and Big Government oppression. The government oppresses natural medicine, prevention and natural cures while handing a monopoly to the drug industry which claims to "treat" all the health conditions in the country. This is one of the big reasons why America is going broke.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a...

http://247wallst.com/healthcare-business/201...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-...

https://www.naturalnews.com/046630_CDC_whistl...

https://www.naturalnews.com/021516_generic_dr...

https://www.naturalnews.com/036417_Glaxo_Merc...