2024 Shkreli Awards

JANUARY 7, 2025 — Welcome to the 8th annual Shkreli Awards, the Lown Institute’s top ten list of the worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare, named for the infamous “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli.

Nominees for the Shkreli Awards are compiled by Lown Institute staff with input from readers of Lown Weekly. An esteemed panel of patient activists, clinicians, health policy experts, and journalists help determine the winners. (press release | previous winners)

An NBC News investigation revealed that the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) in Fort Worth dissected and distributed unclaimed bodies without properly seeking consent from the deceased or their families. The center’s business supplied body parts to medical students as well as major for-profit ventures like Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson. The investigation found repeated failures at the Center and at the county level to contact family members who were, in fact, relatively easy to identify and reach.

Family members like those of Victor Carl Honey, a veteran entitled to a burial with military honors, were understandably disturbed. “It’s like a hole in your soul that can never be filled,” said Brenda Cloud, one of Honey’s sisters. “We feel violated.” It turns out that before he was cremated, a Swedish medical device maker paid $341 for Honey’s right leg, a Pittsburgh medical education company spent $900 for his torso, and the U.S. Army paid $210 for bones from his skull.

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