Sydney schoolboys take down Martin Shkreli, the 'most hated man in the world'

Every issue needs a villian, and a face. If you give the people both, they will rise to the occasion.

Guys aeacus is right.

But the price had already been hilariously low. And if he wanted to help, couldn't he have pushed funding to make it more affordable? The drug is still the same drug, pyrimethamine. And it's not as if Shkreli picked up the formula from the students and lowered the prices back down to reasonable levels. In fact, what the students did is somewhat meaningless, as since he owns the rights to the drug, he could easily prevent others from selling it, even if they had the same drug.

Shkreli hiking the process caused other people to try to come up woth a better drug, instead of using this old drug. It was a push to come up with something better. This guy was villainized by assumptions and the media that's all there is to it.

Pyrimethamine is pyrimethamine. There's not much quite like it, and even if they did make something new, it's not as if it'll fill all the same roles. Drugs all have their own interactions and effects, making some more effective for certain people than others. It's no good to make something near inaccessible for people in the hopes that someone will make something better, for this reason, and because research takes time, and people could die or get injured during that time.

It's not near inaccessible though, as far as I know he still sells it to the government for almost free and people who have insurance can still get for the old price.

It's a drug that's 62 years old. It's time to make a more effective drug instead of settling on this old one. We're more advanced than 62 years ago therefore we have a better chance of making a more effective drug and like @garlog it's still available to people and if for some reason they can't get it. Shkreli made himself available to get ahold of it someone for some reason can't get it.

Penicillin is ancient. Aspirin is ancient. Yet we don't hike the prices up on these medicines in the hopes that someone will come up with something "better". We fund research. We do research. We make the progress ourselves rather than forcing a struggle in the hopes something good will come from it.

No one is struggling and penicillin and aspirin don't have as many side effects. You have your opinion of him, I have mine. I've spoken to him and understand his reasoning. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I didn't like him from what I saw and heard the media say about him until I actually talked to him.

I understand. The people which you know personally are different from those who you know otherwise. Even if they were literally Hitler, it's hard to hate them when you really get to know them and listen to their excuses. In the end, it's not entirely his fault for what he did. The real problem is that we're able to patent medicine in the first place and put rights and restrictions on them. It's a disaster that we're able to play with the prices of these things and restrict access in these ways. Because he isn't the first or the last to do this.

That's true. I'm with you on your stance on medicine patents