McKinsey Apologizes for Its Role In Helping Purdue Pharma “Turbocharge” Opioid Sales

by Heather Callaghan

With news like this coming out every now and then, it’s no surprise that big pharma gets a bad rep. While a lot of medicine has been created to save people’s lives and improve their quality of life, seems like there will always be a few bad apples in the industry. 

For executives playing important roles that could potentially affect millions of lives to succumb to greed is probably one of the oldest reasons why these kinds of things still happen. Maybe morals or philosophy classes should be made mandatory early in school?

Either way, these individuals clearly didn’t think about the consequences of their actions. There’s no excuses for what’s been done. The pain and trauma that affected countless families cannot be erased. Only time will ease their pain.

This reminds me of the story about  “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli who got sued by federal officials and the state of New York for allegedly violating antitrust law when he jacked up the price of a crucial drug by 5,000 per cent overnight in 2015. And while this man was thrown under the bus by his company as a scapegoat, the price of the drug called daraphim remained high.

If you head on over to GoodRX, where they list the prices of drugs, you’ll see that 4 tablets of this medicine which used to cost $13.50/tablet is now around $720 for 4 tablets.

What makes this whole ordeal worse is that the story doesn’t just end here. Not even close. After years of public outrage over the price hikes of Shkreli, Generic Daraprim finally hit the market in March 2020, meaning competition should bring “bad news” to the legacy brand manufacturer, right? Cheap prices for all, right?

Wrong. 

If you look for the price of pyrimethamine, which is the generic version of daraprim, you’ll find that it’s price is far from being cheaper.

If you want to learn more about this, I strongly recommend you read this, where everything is explained in greater detail. You’re in for a shock.

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Anyways, coming back to today’s main story, which is about the Mckinsey firm facing mounting pressure about its role in the opioid crisis.

According to the NYTimes, McKinsey has taken the unusual step of acknowledging that its work with Purdue Pharma fell short of its standards and vowed a full internal review of its actions, including the possible destruction of documents. 

Read the full story here.

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