What Hillary's Pharma Plan Means for Biotech Investors

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, made news this week when he announced he would raise the price of a medication his company had acquired, Darapim (pyrimethamine), from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Darapim, which has been on the market for 62 years, is an antiparasitic used to treat acute malaria and toxoplasmosis. It's also used off-label to prevent and treat opportunistic infections in AIDS patients. "Off label" simply means doctors use it for indications not reviewed by the FDA. For patients with these indications, the drug can be lifesaving. Predictably, Shkreli's announcement caused a public uproar, and yesterday, the CEO backed off his position, promising to deliver the drug more cheaply. We have yet to see what the final number will be. During the public protest, carried out largely online, one 21-word tweet stood out among the rest. It came from Hillary Clinton and read, "Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on." In response, biotech ETFs dropped about 5%. Here's what biotech investors need to know... Tags: biotech etfs , biotech investors , biotech stocks , Hillary Clinton , Hillary's pharma plan , pharma plan To get full access to all Money Morning content, click here About Money Morning: Money Morning gives you access to a team of ten market experts with more than 250 years of combined investing experience – for free . Our experts – who have appeared on FOXBusiness, CNBC, NPR, and BloombergTV – deliver daily investing tips and stock picks, provide analysis with actions to take, and answer your biggest market questions. Our goal is to help our millions of e-newsletter subscribers and Moneymorning.com visitors become smarter, more confident investors. Disclaimer: © 2015 Money Morning and Money Map Press. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including the world wide web), of content from this webpage, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Money Morning. 16 W. Madison St. Baltimore, MD, 21201. The post What Hillary's Pharma Plan Means for Biotech Investors appeared first on Money Morning - We Make Investing Profitable .