Once again Diabetes Health gets to the bottom of a breaking point question: why does insulin cost more than ever?
When Fred Banting and Charles Best first discovered insulin in 1921, they sold the patent for a dollar ($1) so that insulin could quickly become available for life-saving use. Within 2 years, Eli Lilly had sold over 60 million units of its purified extract of pig and cow pancreas. Over the next 60 years, purification and duration improvements were applied to insulin. However, each new version of insulin came with a new patent and a higher price tag. By the 80s, yeasts were being used as tiny insulin-making factories. Once the gene for human insulin was inserted into one yeast DNA, the yeast multiplied ad infinitum, and each new yeast came with a little copy of human insulin. This breakthrough, naturally, carried with it a big, profit-making patent.
In 1996, the FDA approved the first insulin analog. Newer insulins are called analogs because they're similar to human insulin-- but not quite exactly. Before being put into the yeast, the human genetic material is slightly changed, to produce slower or quicker acting insulin, for instance. Each one of these improvements comes, of course, with a patent. And all these patented insulins cost - big time. For the entire story, comments from influential diabetes advocates and the evolution of insulin price gouging - see the full article at Diabetes Health!
1. Even if Generic Insulins were approved and reached the Marketplace, the price would probably still be too high for many people with Diabetes to be able to afford. The problem is called GREED!!
Posted at 11:27AM on Jun 17th 2007 by BetterCell