Greed has been around mankind since the beginning of time. And medicine more specifically the pharmacy industry is certainly no exception.

Just recently a young buck all of 32 years old, already a multimillionaire, but not satisfied with his paltry worth, purchased a pharmaceutical company called Turving Pharmaceuticals. Now this company is the only one which makes a drug called Daraprim.

What does Daraprim do? It is the arguably the only effective drug against Toxoplasmosis , which is a life threatening infection seen often in AIDS and cancer patients. Martin Shkreli, the new CEO and owner, decided to jack up the price of this drug 5,500% from $13.50 a tablet to a whopping $750! He initially had the nerve to say that the price increase was not excessive. Yet many of these patients could not have afforded such as drastic increase leading to potentially fatal consequences.

Turns out this pharma company manufactures basically generics or essentially copies of drugs already on the market. It spends only about 3% of its revenues on research.

Why is this important? Well, the US is the only country in the world which does not regulate drug prices. In return the average multi billion dollar research money spent to have a drug approved is supposed to be a pay back for the lack of regulation. Problem is if a company like Turving spots a drug which no one else makes and is a generic, it can increase the price to whatever and reap huge profits.

Those who suffer are us: Sooner or later most everyone will need to be on some medications. Sensible regulation of certain drugs seems reasonable, especially when lives are at stake.