As a teenager, Sam Isaly lost the use of his legs and the partial use of his upper body to a wrestling injury. This did not stop him from getting to Princeton and graduating with honors, nor from studying at the London School of Economics. It did not keep him from founding and running his own hedge fund for three decades, nor from becoming the most successful investor ever in the life sciences space.
Indeed, Isaly’s is the sort of overcoming-of-adversity stories that keeps the American Dream alive, and with it the belief that anyone can do anything if they just set their minds to it. But, according to Isaly, that’s not entirely true: For instance, he says his paralysis prevents him from, say, embedding pornographic material in routine e-mails to his assistant, or creating a hostile work environment for the tiny handful of women working at his OrbiMed Advisors through verbal abuse and sexually explicit japery. At the very least, he says the Boston Globe didn’t do enough reporting on whether his condition might have prevented him from doing any or all of the gross things it reported he did and which led to his departure from OrbiMed—whatever that reporting might be, with what we’re sure would have been Isaly’s and OrbiMed’s full cooperation—and so: Money, please.