Way Back When... Insulin Was Cheap (And Then It Wasn't)
In light of all the outrage over high insulin costs these days, we thought it would be interesting (to say the least!) to take a "Wayback Wednesday" walk through the history of this topic in the US... In the Beginning Remember those guys who actually discovered insulin back in 1921? Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best were the main two, along with Dr. James Collip -- all three had their names attached to the patent awarded in January 1923 to their method of making insulin. Well, did you know that their original intellectual property rights were sold for just $3 in Canadian money? That's right. When the researchers were ready to turn over the patent of their discovery to the University of Toronto for production purposes in 1923, they agreed to receive only $1 each (the equivalent of $14 today) in compensation. Here's an excerpt from a 2002 article chronicling this: "For $1.00 to each, the three discoverers assigned their patent rig...