Roleplay with me for a brief minute here.

Let’s imagine he wasn’t banned for life from the drug industry. Let’s also imagine, and here’s the roleplaying, that you are a pharmaceutical company executive. Okay, you’re doing the best job you can. You’re trying to be an ethical pharma exec, the most ethical such a person can be. You’re trying to do your best by the people you serve, okay. Keep your employees in good wages, but also do no harm by your patients, either medically or financially. You know you’ve made some compromises to keep your company running smoothly, but by god, haven’t we all?

Now imagine Shkreli comes to you. “Bro! I’ve got some ideas! Let’s buy some patents! Let’s sell some drugs! Yeah baby I’m so back!” Do you, the nominally ethical pharma exec, work with Martin Shkreli?

No. Of course you don’t. You may have crossed a line or two, you aren’t in this totally to help your fellow human, but there are lines you won’t cross, and obviously Martin Shkreli is one of those lines.

But now, okay, now, I want you to imagine the kind of person who would say yes to working with Martin Shkreli. Imagine what that person is like, imagine the kind of business deals they make at other times. That person exists. In fact there’s lots of him.

Do you want that pharma exec working in the drug industry? I sure as hell do not.

My proposal, very briefly, is that we don’t ban Martin Shkreli from the drug industry. I say we let him go out and make deals. And every time he lands a deal, the FBI busts in and arrests both of them. Ban anyone he touches from working in the industry, too. Make him the Typhoid Mary, the Judas goat, of pharma ethics violations.