history

Banting sold the insulin patent for $1.00. Banting refused to add his name to the insulin patent because he found it unethical for a doctor to benefit from a discovery that saved lives. His colleagues, James Collip and Charles Best, eventually sold the insulin patent for a symbolic dollar to the University of Toronto.

Determined to prevent insulin from becoming a business racket, the Toronto team kept Eli Lilly at bay through months' worth of repeated attempts to collaborate. The university had been doing its best to manufacture insulin on its own, but struggled to meet the demands of even the small group of patients participating in early trials. What limited supply it did produce was subject to shortages and contamination, which Lilly reps were all too happy to emphasize in making their case that a professional, scaled-up manufacturing operation was in the best interests of diabetes patients.

Eventually, Banting and his team reluctantly agreed: Lilly was granted exclusive rights to manufacture and distribute insulin in the United States for one year, with European rights going to a Danish firm called Nordisk (later merged to become Novo Nordisk, as it is known today). Thereafter, both firms were entitled to patent any future innovations on their products, and competitors were hypothetically free to enter the market.

But the wholesale prices of the most common insulins tripled from 2007 to 2017. The three pharmaceutical companies that manufacture insulin—Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi—rake in billions in profits annually from insulin sales alone, with the U.S. market accounting for 15 percent of global insulin users but almost 50 percent of its worldwide revenues.

Many patients in America ration it out because the co-pays are so high. A family member with what is considered good insurance has a $200 per month co-pay for her child with type 1 diabetes.

This article explains how it went from that $1.00 patent sale to big business today. I wonder what Banting would say if he only knew what has happened to the cost of insulin.

https://prospect.org/health/insulin-racket/