Daraprim is an antibiotic used to treat babies, AIDS and cancer patients, and victims of malaria. It is not a new drug, having been on the market for 62 years. Recently, however, its price rocketed from $13.50 to $750 overnight when a company called Turing Pharmaceuticals bought it and decided to jack up its price.

Turing is led by Martin Shkreli — a notorious hedge fund manager and entrepreneur known for his radical business ideals.

The effect is clear: Many hospitals are being forced to use alternative methods of treatment that are not nearly as effective. The distributors of this drug are endangering the health of millions of people with this massive price change.

Unfortunately, Daraprim is not a unique case. Pharmaceutical companies often justify their excessive pricing by saying that the excess profit goes to research and development. In this case, though, Turing Pharmaceuticals is not a developmental company; it is merely in charge of marketing and distribution.

So, in order to justify this monumental injustice, Turing claims that the drug is used so infrequently that the impact on the health system is miniscule. Clearly, however, this is not the case, especially for the individuals who depend on it.

For people’s safety and well-being, further restrictions need to be placed on pharmaceutical companies to ensure that they are not charging unfairly for life-saving medicines.

Pharmaceutical companies have largely been left alone, as questions of access to health care have dominated the medical field for the last decade, and as a result, several extreme price rises have gone under the radar. Doxycycline, another antibiotic, went from $20 a bottle in October of 2013 to $1,849 by April of 2014. Isuprell and Nitopress, two large pharmaceutical distributors, raised their prices by 525 percent and 212 percent, respectively.

It is time for Congress to step in. So far, we have seen legislators be almost completely occupied by other parts of the health care industry, what with ObamaCare and Medicare, but this pharmaceutical issue is just as pressing and requires as much attention as possible.

The pattern is clear: Pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of the government’s blindness. It is imperative that this issue be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner — with legislation that makes it illegal to buy and resell drugs with excessive markups.