Marathon gets the Shkreli treatment from industry after $89K drug dust up

Beth Mole

Public relations nightmare strikes just when drug makers try cleaning their image.

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Last week, Marathon Pharmaceuticals announced that it would start selling an old steroid drug that treats Duchenne muscular dystrophy for a whopping $89,000 per year of treatment. That’s a steep increase from the $1,200-per-year generic version that families could import from other countries.
The standard reactions ensued: patient groups were outraged, health experts fretted, and lawmakers made blustery statements before sending strongly worded letters. The reaction was, sadly, exactly what we’ve seen each time drug makers outrageously price drugs that should be affordable.
But one thing was different this time: Marathon’s eye-popping price tag landed on the heels of an industry-wide effort to distance itself from price gouging. Now, Marathon’s industry partners are joining in the outrage, and Marathon has hit “pause” on the drug’s release. Marathon’s standing within the industry may even be in question, according to the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, which currently counts Marathon as a member.
In a statement e-mailed to Ars, PhRMA President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl wrote:

We are pleased Marathon decided to pause the launch of [its] medicine to solicit additional input from patients and other stakeholders. [Marathon’s] recent actions are not consistent with the mission of our organization. In addition, the leadership of the PhRMA Board of Directors has begun a comprehensive review of our membership criteria to ensure we are focused on representing research-based biopharmaceutical companies who take significant risks to bring new treatments and cures to patients.

Just last month, PhRMA started an advertising campaign that emphasized its members’ efforts to research and develop drugs. The idea was to rebrand the industry as made up of hard-working scientists—not greedy investors that manipulate the market and launch the prices of old or generic drugs into the stratosphere.

In media interviews, Ubl tied this latter practice to the likes of Martin Shkreli, the ex-pharmaceutical CEO who notoriously raised the price of a decades-old anti-parasitic drug by more than 5,000 percent. (In response to the slight, Shkreli set up a website to air the dirty laundry of PhRMA’s members.)

In an exchange with Ars, PhRMA wouldn’t elaborate on how it might change its membership criteria.

There’s one big obstacle to booting Marathon, however: Marathon’s CEO, Jeff Aronin, is on PhRMA’s board of directors.