What does an ex-Pharma Bro do next? If it's Shkreli, it's an AI Dr bot Just because you're banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life, that doesn't mean you can't launch a medical chatbot to dispense advice. On Thursday, Martin Shkreli, released last year from a seven-year stint in prison for securities fraud, announced the availability of Dr Gupta. The controversial entrepreneur described …
The best part of Shkreli's trial was how obviously the courtroom artist loathed him.
https://sc.cnbcfm.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/files/2017/07/27/shkreli-drawing.jpg
Too bad part of his sentence wasn't a lifetime ban on being involved in anything related in any way to the medical field. Oh well, knowing him I'm sure he'll do something illegal soon if he hasn't already, and since he's already familiar to law enforcement they will immediately take note should his name appear on their radar again.
That would probably have been thrown out by a higher court as being too harsh and "preventing mr. Shkreli from finding lawful employment" since he claims that that's his specialty. Personally I think he shouldn't ever be allowed to run any company ever again, just be a wage slave and actually be useful (or be fired). But given how this shitbag is behaving, give it some time, harsher punishments might still come to him.
If I was entirely without ethics I would produce a front-end that parsed US "healthcare" insurance claims, pre-auth requests, etc and produced a text as to why it should be denied. And sell it to the US medical insurance industry. Or maybe they already has this process streamlined as far as it can be?
If you've got no morals and don't mind screwing people over to make a buck you might not mind what this guy did in the first place (or even think he's awesome for it). Plenty of dirtbags in the world with money to burn who would go into business with this guy to try to make a quick buck.
If it's a "physician chatbot" but isn't intended to give medical advice, what exactly is it's purpose? Why would people use it? Is it supposed to hold some sort of entertainment value ("I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV"). The FDA regulates medical devices in the US and they would probably be interested in finding out more. I suspect it will be something more like the WebMD website, but with chatbot features. LLMs are new territory for many fields and the current laws and regulations weren't written with them in mind.
Because he knows the regulators are so swamped they can barely keep up with device and drug applications, so defanged they can barely do anything except issue warning letters and very very rarely ask other branches if the government to block wrongdoing, finally have been directed to do no more than rubber stamp applications as long as those applications can say "of course this data is real, and of course we follow the relevant international standards". The weakening started in the 2000's when they stopped adding capacity to address the rising tide of new things, then accelerated during obama when they were told to increase approvals, then they were just shot to hell when they were ordered to stop standing in the way of entrepreneurs and big drug companies. I wish the stupid aducanumab decision was the bottom but the ship appears to be pointed firmly downwards thanks to industry capture of most of the directors. Thanks Janet Woodcock (the Ajit Pai of the FDA).
It's the same as all the people who sell useless things under vague suggestions that it will make you healthier and eliminate any disease or discomfort you might have. They have to put in the denials because otherwise they will face fraud charges, but it won't stop them from making claims that it will be very helpful and you need to buy it right now or you will die. They end up making money on usually inert, though sometimes toxic stuff. Why not try a variant of the scam where you have a program sound authoritative as it suggests such things to you? The main reason is because you don't have the morals of a parasite, but not everybody is in that group.
Dear Dr Gupta, I have been depressed for a while. What can I do to cheer myself and my friends up?
DR: Punching Martin Shkreli repeatedly in his very-punchable face (with punches) would cheer up the most depressed Sloth in the world and bring a smile to the face of a Blobfish.
[I am not a doctor and therefore punching Martin Shkreli in the face 200 times may not cure your depression, but it sure would make other people laugh]
From I can gather online a lot of doctors in the US are just pill happy drug dealers. They seem to have a culture of dispensing pills to treat symptoms rather than treat underlying issues, which is far more profitable for the big pharma corps that get a premium per pill from the insurers. It's how the US wound up with a massive opioid epidemic.
But sure, the guy who wanted to cash in on the insurers willing to pay hundreds per pill is the bad guy. What's worse is he went to prison just to make the american public believe there is justice in the US whilst they keep getting rinsed by pharma corporations and insurance companies.
You seen unaware of how the insurance business works.
They calculate how much, on average, they'll have to spend on payouts - like those pills. They disallow any that are "too expensive".
Then they add a profit margin.
Then they set your insurance premium to ensure they make that profit.
The more expensive the pills, the higher your premiums will be - unless the insurer decides they're too expensive and won't buy them at all.
If your employer is paying the premium, then that's money you could have been paid in salary/bonus, if it hadn't gone to the insurance company.
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