In 2015, Martin Shkreli became the smirking face of drug company greed when, as founder and then-chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he bought rights to the anti-parasitic medication Daraprim and then jacked up the price from $17.60 to $750 per pill. At the time, the drug was the only therapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for toxoplasmosis, a disease that causes serious illness in people with weak immune systems, including babies born to mothers infected with the parasite and those with HIV.
For Alex Oshmyansky, an emergency radiologist, Shkreli's move was what tipped him over the edge. Fresh out of his radiology fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, the young doctor had already seen patients grow sicker and even die because they couldn't afford their medications. He vowed to become the anti-Shkreli by starting a company to sell vital drugs at or near cost.
