September 25, 2015

"Martin Shkreli... hahahahaha, just kidding, that guy’s going to Hell."

From the Village Voice article "Here are 25 New Yorkers Who Really Need Pope Francis to Forgive Them."

I'm reading The Village Voice this morning — orthography buffs will know why I capitalized the "t" in "the" in this sentence and not the previous sentence — because I'd arrived at "R.I.P. St. Vincent's Hospital" in connection with the story of the white man who settled Brooklyn.
It was where the lowly, the mighty, and the garden-variety zany denizens of downtown were born, cared for, and died. Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Village poet who first proclaimed the lovely light of a candle burned at both ends, was given the hospital's name after it saved her uncle's life. It was where Gregory Corso—the beat poet who "sang Italian songs as sweet as Caruso and Sinatra," as Jack Kerouac said—was born in 1930.
St. Vincent's Hospital is the St. Vincent in Edna St. Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends;
   It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
   It gives a lovely light!
The white man who settled Brooklyn is the subject of the post that's sat at the top of this blog overnight and was the subject of conversation between Meade and me as we assembled breakfast this morning. Meade thought it was funny that the article about the man had the correction: "This article initially quoted B.A. as saying he was born in 'Mt. Sinai.' He actually says he was born in St. Vincent's. We regret the error." As if such a trivial error, amidst everything else that happened, could be a subject of serious regret.

I took the position that, in New York City, the difference between Mt. Sinai and St. Vincent is huge. For a man who is adamant about his urban territorial credentials, the difference is intense. Born in St. Vincent's? He may think he's a natural-born hipster. He's 46, so he was born in 1969. That was the year of the Stonewall riots in the Village, and he was saying "I grew up with Stonewall, I grew up on the laps of drag queens." He also says: "So what I have in this city is ownership. When I look at the concrete I think, oh my blood mixes with the concrete." Blood and concrete ≈ St. Vincent's.

As for St. Vincent himself — St. Vincent De Paul — he was captured by Barbary pirates in 1605 and sold into slavery. His second master was a spagyrical physician, and Vincent learned medicine from the Muslims, converted to Islam, and had 3 wives. There's more to that story. He gets back to France and to Christianity, and, obviously, sainthood. [ADDED: The linked Wikipedia article is incredibly confusing, as discussed in the comments, but, to be brief, the "converted to Islam, and had 3 wives" part isn't about Vincent.]

And Martin Shkreli, the man whose name festers in the post title? Don't you know who he is? His fame, too, lies in the field of medicine: "Thanks to Martin Shkreli, life-saving drug Daraprim will now cost $750 per pill—up from $13.50. And no one, not even the FDA, can stop him."

20 comments:

David Begley said...

Shkreli pulled his price increase stunt right before he shorted the IBB with full knowledge of Hillary's price control and patent life shortening proposal.

And when will the MSM ask Hillary if her son-in- law was in on this shorting scheme? Forgot! She only takes questions from Lena Dunham.

The entire thing was about shorting biotech and was well planned in advance. The Clintons were in on it.

mccullough said...

It's hard to believe Edna beat out TS Eliots The Wasteland for the Pultizer Prize in 1922.

john mosby said...

Vincent de Paul didn't convert to Islam and marry 3 gals - his third owner, also an RC priest and also a captive of Muslim corsairs, had converted to Islam and married 3 gals prior to buying Vincent. This owner was shamed into resuming Christian practice and emigrated back to France, along with Vincent, who never stopped being Christian.

The Wikipedia article is not very clearly written, but the sense is there.

At any rate, a very interesting anecdote from the long history of Africans raiding Europe for slaves....

JSM

Michael said...

I too noted the correction in the article and saw it as a dig, knife, at the dipshit. Well done.

PatHMV said...

Just so everybody understands, the drug Daraprim (generic name: Pyrimethamine), is NOT protected by a patent, having been invented in 1953. According to Wikipedia, there are no generic manufacturers simply because the market for it is so small, there's not been enough quantity demand to entice any generic drug makers to make it. So the solution to Mr. Shkreli is simple. Let any of the myriad generic drug makers out there start to make it, at a much cheaper price than Shkreli is charging. If I were in the business, I'd sign a few long term contracts to supply the major pharmaceutical chains on an exclusive basis for a few years, guaranteeing that the chains wouldn't go back to Shkreli when he inevitably drops the price to counteract the competition. Basically, the entire medical community could shun the man and his company for this drug, so long as some other manufacturer was willing to make the drug, which they are completely legally free to do.

rehajm said...

PatHMV said...
Just so everybody understands, the drug Daraprim (generic name: Pyrimethamine), is NOT protected by a patent, having been invented in 1953.


I was just typing up the same thing but this says it better. The whole Shkreli story is bizarre because of it's dearth of facts and logic. The outrage smells of astroturf and political operatives.

Peter said...

Another PoV on the subject of How This Happened:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/generic-drug-regulation.html

Mr. Colby said...

I would possibly have gone with "From the The Village Voice article".

Roger Sweeny said...

There are generic versions of Daraprim (generic name: Pyrimethamine) made in India but U.S. law forbids importation because those manufacturers aren't approved by the FDA. Also, the FDA has to approve any American manufacturer's plan to produce a generic. Alas, the FDA is not known for speed.

buwaya said...

I sympathize with urban territory credentials.
We are an old Manila family. Ancestors guarded its walls, sailed from its piers on expeditions, and uncounted generations fill its cemeteries. We knew every old church, every bastion, every gate, every market. Thirty years away from there I'm sure I would have no problem getting around on public transportation or guiding a tour or getting some license fixed at city hall.
Thirty years in San Francisco and I still don't know it as well.
Everybody needs a place.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I stopped reading as soon as I picked up on the pretense of the Pope Francis angle.

Chris N said...

I'll stick with the Utne Reader.

But if anyone wants in on a Gluten-only box store (I'm-A-GMO-Kid play area, pictures of wealthy industrialists on the walls), let me know

joeknows said...

60 25 mg pills of Pyrimethamine, at this time, may be purchased in Canada for $75.05. The same thing happened to me several years back with Colchicine, which went from .05 cents per pill to $5.00 per pill. At that time I had to go online to get the medicine from Canada. Looking into it further it seemed that the price increase was approved by the US Congress. The Congress allowed one drug company a monopoly over a certain drug with the promise that it would improve it. I sent a letter to Herb Kohl and he said he was aware of the practice and was looking into the matter. That was the last that I heard from Herb Kohl. Come to think about it Herb Kohl's time in the senate seems like a big blur to me. I don't remember much about his stay there. Of course he did bring strawberry flavored milk to the Wisconsin State Fair. That's something (and the Kohl Center in Madison).

cubanbob said...

Roger Sweeny said...

There are generic versions of Daraprim (generic name: Pyrimethamine) made in India but U.S. law forbids importation because those manufacturers aren't approved by the FDA. Also, the FDA has to approve any American manufacturer's plan to produce a generic. Alas, the FDA is not known for speed.
9/25/15, 8:58 AM "

Its a safe bet the FDA will make an exception in this case.

Anonymous said...

According to Wikipedia, it wasn't Vincent who converted to Islam and had three wives, but rather, one of his slavemasters, a former Franciscan priest. Vincent, with the help of the ex-priest's second wife, got the ex-priest back on Christian track.

Ann Althouse said...

"Vincent de Paul didn't convert to Islam and marry 3 gals - his third owner, also an RC priest and also a captive of Muslim corsairs, had converted to Islam and married 3 gals prior to buying Vincent. This owner was shamed into resuming Christian practice and emigrated back to France, along with Vincent, who never stopped being Christian. The Wikipedia article is not very clearly written, but the sense is there."

Wow, I went back and reread it. It's quite confusing. The "He" as that paragraph continues refers to the priest, not to Vincent? That surprises me, that the article would continue about the priest, not the subject of the article, for so long about him. The text is:

"His new master was a former priest and Franciscan from Nice, named Guillaume Gautier. He had converted to Islam in order to gain his freedom from slavery and was living in the mountains with three wives."

But when was the priest ever identified as a slave? The priest was the master, so somehow he was at some earlier point a slave. The slave under discussion at that point in the article was Vincent. How did the priest, the slave master turn into the slave?

It continues:

"The second wife, a Muslim by birth, was drawn to and visited him in the fields to question him about his faith. She became convinced that his faith was true and admonished her husband for renouncing his Christianity. He became remorseful and decided to escape back to France with his slave."

At that point, I guess you can see that the "He" must be the master, since he has a slave and the slave must be Vincent.

PeterJ said...

"But when was the priest ever identified as a slave? The priest was the master, so somehow he was at some earlier point a slave."

Really! A Catholic Christian priest could NOT be anything but a slave if he lived as a free man in Moslem N. Africa, in the 17th century. The author of the article must have assumed that would be obvious to anybody. But it wasn't to you. Did you assume that Christians, and in particular their priests, could live freely in a Moslem country at that time?

And actually, they can't live freely in most of the Moslem world now either. And are being murdered and enslaved with great gusto by the various jihadist folks, particularly Islamic State.

wildswan said...

Re: St Vincent de Paul and slavery
Islamic slavery, like Roman slavery, allowed slaves to own slaves. There was even a general in the Dervish empire in the Sudan in the 1880's - Abu Anga - who was a slave.

MrCharlie2 said...

The American idea of slavery comes from the the 19th century slave economy of the South, providing a critical raw commodity for the industrial machine of England. (the fucking saxons.)

16th-19th century: lots of "renegados" across N. Africa, and European slaves like Cervantes. Cervantes was ransomed by his family, others (if I can believe O'Brien and Perez-Revere) were ransomed by strangers. I have the impression that this was a nasty 2 way street.

An enslaved priest buying Vincent would be a man of charity and courage.

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