Turing Pharmaceuticals founder and CEO Martin Shkreli -- the "altruist" who profiteered off the suffering of pregnant women and dying AIDS and cancer patients -- said Tuesday that he would curtail his plan to raise the price of the anti-parasitic Daraprim to $750.
"It is absolutely a reaction," he said, referring to the not insubstantial outcry at his decision to raise the cost of the treatment for toxoplasmosis from $1,350 to $63,000.
"There were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action. I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people," he continued, perhaps in reference to his comments that he was only in this because he's "a capitalist...trying to create a big drug company."
The drug will be re-priced at $13.50 within the next few weeks, according to the NBC report, which also said that the "self-trained biologist" was upset with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton characterizing his business practices as "price gouging."
"It’s very easy to see a large drug price increase and say ‘Gosh those people must be gouging,'" Shkreli said. "But when you find out the company is not making any money, what does that mean? It’s very hard stuff to understand."
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