Sticking it to the man
Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2016 6:41 am
The man who sparked outrage last year by hiking the price of a life-saving drug may have met his match in some Australian schoolboys.
US executive Martin Shkreli became a symbol of greed when he raised the price of a tablet of Daraprim from $13.50 (£11) to $750.
Now, Sydney school students have recreated the drug's key ingredient for just $20.
Daraprim is an anti-parasitic drug used by malaria and Aids patients.
The Sydney Grammar boys, all 17, synthesised the active ingredient, pyrimethamine, in their school science laboratory.
"It wasn't terribly hard but that's really the point, I think, because we're high school students," one boy, Charles Jameson, told the BBC.
The students produced 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine for $20. In the US, the same quantity would cost up to $110,000.
In most countries, including Australia and Britain, the drug retails for less than $1.50 per pill.
