Are All Pharma CEOs Martin Shkrelis?

Martin Shkreli claims he was arrested because he tried to maximize his company's profits by raising the price of a life-saving drug. There is no doubt that may have been a factor in the timing of the arrest, which resulted in even more attention to common practices employed by the drug industry to keep drug prices high and maximize profits as this NYT editorial points out.

NYT Editors: Shkreli No Different Than Other Pharma Leaders

Is Martin Shkreli a Psychopath?

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, is a former hedge fund manager who has become the public face of the drug pricing controversy after his company raised the price of the anti-infection drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent.

Now the Senate’s special committee on aging requested documents and information from Turing and invited Shkreli to testify.

Shkreli taunted politicians on Tweeter days before the Senate invite, saying he was "In DC. If any politicians want to start, come at me" (read "Senate Invites Turing CEO Shkreli to Visit. Just What He Wanted!") - a taunt typical of a Psychopath. Indeed, Shkreli has been called a "morally bankrupt sociopath," a "greedy sociopath," a "sociopathic bounty hunter," and an "evil sociopathic asshole."

I don't think Shkreli is a sociopath - I think he better fits the profile of a psychopath. To find out, I took a PsychCentral "Psychopathy Quiz" posing as Shkreli and supplying answers I thought indicative of his behavior. So, how did he score?

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5 Reasons Why I Follow Martin Shkreli on Twitter

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical, has been called "the most hated man on the Internet" after he raised the price of a generic AIDS and cancer drug by exploiting a few FDA loopholes (see here).

Despite that, there are at least 5 reasons why I chose to follow him on Twitter.

#1: He Has a REAL Enigma Machine!
I always wanted one of these and I'm jealous that Mr. Shkreli has one. What pharma CEO would also not like to have an Enigma machine?

But the real Enigma is Shkreli himself! He recently tweeted: "New Enigma machine for our office. Perhaps it will help us crack the code in drug development."

Code? What code? We don' need no stinking' code! Unless the "code" is buy a cheap generic drug and exploit loopholes to jack up the price.

He tweeted the photo shown here as proof that he has the machine as well as some other junk he may or may not be using to help crack the drug development "code."

That's just a "wow" reason. Here are some other more important reasons why I chose to follow Shkreli on Twitter.

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