Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is the latest corporation to take a hit from Elon Musk‘s chaotic Twitter takeover. A fake account impersonating the company, with a blue checkmark purchased for $8, tweeted that the company was now giving away insulin for free.
The fake account posted the tweet around 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 10 and it stayed online for several hours. While it was up it garnered thousands of likes and retweets. By Friday morning, the account’s verification status was gone and it was set to private.
However, the damage had been done, with LLY shares plummeting 4.5%, according to Investor’s Business Daily. Other health stocks took a beating as well. Here’s a screenshot of the offending tweet:
The company was forced to respond to the situation from its actual account. “We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account.”
Insulin is a drug that was publicly funded and given away by its creator Frederick Banting in 1923. He refused to put his name on the patent, claiming it was unethical to profit from a medicine that saved lives. The cost of the drug has tripled over the last ten years, reaching $450 by 2016.
It’s gotten so bad that people ration their doses to afford the costly drug. In a lengthy thread about the topic, The Jewish Vote co-founder Rafael Shimunov called out Eli Lilly for its greed.
“Eli Lilly stock isn’t just tanking because of a satirical Tweet on Musk’s hellscape, it’s tanking because millions of people are asking why we have to pay for insulin, when it was made to be free. That’s why other insulin stocks are falling too.”
Former presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also singled out Eli Lilly.
Someone else tweeted that “it cost some hero $8 to evaporate billions in Eli Lilly stock value. Elon accidentally created one of the most cost effective anti capitalist tools in history.”
Sure the company lost billions but it’s hard to feel bad when there are people who literally only take half their insulin doses just to afford the costly drug. As for Twitter, there are lawsuits coming. So many lawsuits.