The Politics of Insulin (Part 3)

Oakland fights back with open-source insulin

The following is an excerpt from p. 112-114 of Chapter 2, “Sugar is the Knife: The World’s Favorite Drug” from my new book, Drugism (2022):

[This excerpt is the 3rd in a 3-part series exploring sugar, diabetes, and the political/economic underpinnings of the insulin market. See also Part 1 and Part 2.]

That the Rockefellers continued to fund the development of drugs to accompany sugar consumption even after insulin’s development is notable in itself. Rockefeller Institute scientists were likely aware of the many issues with insulin. In addition to its pharmacological properties, which can be deadly, the economic factors around insulin present their own obstacles to any efforts to expand its access.

For example, insulin is powerful enough to kill someone in a single overdose. It is “virtually impossible” to distinguish insulin overdose from suicide.^[i] And like other patients who use needles to take drugs, insulin users often resort to sharing or reusing needles due to insulin’s scarcity.^[ii] While sugar consumption is not typically thought of as a habit that requires the use of needles, for the countless people who rely on insulin to manage Type II diabetes (or, alternatively, “sugar diabetes”), it is. All of the complications associated with injected drug use can be found among people who use insulin.