We’ve written about Martin Shkreli before, he was even mentioned as recently as this morning. This billionaire hedge fund manager and pharma boss hit the world stage in 2015 when he hiked up the price of one of the World Health Organisation’s essential medications by more than 5000 percent. More recently he made news by buying the single copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s latest record Once Upon A Time In Shaolin for $2 million.
If a seething, fiery hatred starts to burn through your mind whenever this scumbag’s name is mentioned, or when you see his punchable little face then you’re not alone. He’s become the poster boy for capitalist America’s blind greed in the face of mass human suffering, and up there with the most hated people on the planet.
Which is why this news is so damn juicy.
Thanks to a Sydney University initiative a group of teenagers from Sydney Grammar school have successfully synthesised an essential malaria medication for a fraction of it’s American value.
The drug named Daraprim is an anti-parasitic medication used to treat a range of problems that develop in patients with deficient immune systems. Ever since Shkreli took control of Turing Pharmaceuticals and hiked the price of the essential medication, Dr. Alice Williamson thought it would be the perfect drug to synthesise with a group of students from Sydney Grammar School.
In their school lab, the students produced 3.7 grams of Daraprim, which would cost an American patient $150,000 to acquire.
This marks the second initiative within Sydney University’s Open Source Malaria Consortium, a program which has been praised by Bill Gates:
Meet the scientist who’s fighting malaria by sharing open data: https://t.co/vj1Gyp4oRH
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) October 30, 2013
Any step forward in the fight against malaria is a positive one, and any step upon Martin Shkreli’s face is even better.
