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+What costs four hundred dollars that has to be bought 24 times a year?
+Insulin.
+
+[Life is like a box of chocolates, It really sucks if you have diabetes]
+
+[Title card of some sort? Maybe just a section title dividing up me
+staring down the camera. See Folding Ideas. Def say "the history of
+insulin glargine," but that could require some shortening]
+[Cite "The Evolution of Insulin Glargine..."?]
+
+Diabetes has been known about since the ancient Greeks, with the first
+known description written in 1500 BC and named in 230 BC.
+It was known natively as "pissing evil" because it was characterized by
+frequent urination followed by death.
+And that's about all scientists understood about the disease until the
+late 19th century.
+
+[https://www.etymonline.com/word/diabetes]
+
+After one laboratory discovered the link between an injured pancreas and
+diabetes by removing the pancreas of several dogs, there launched a
+three-decade search for a way to isolate the substance in the pancreas
+keeping the dogs alive.
+Various scientists tried soaking raw pancreas in solutions of saltwater,
+alcohol, cold water, hot water, and several acids, but these all had the
+same problem: the production was toxic.
+Four University of Toronto scientists, Frederick Banting, Charles Best,
+John James Rickard Macleod, and James Collip shared two Nobels for the
+development of a manufacturing process: slowly inject another hormone,
+secretin, into a cow's pancreas, and then soak the pancreas in solution.
+The patent was sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar.
+Insulin was finally ready to be distributed.
+
+[Too much time spent here? I'm trying to explain how insulin works]
+
+The university licensed the right to produce insulin to twelve different
+companies, with licenses that allowed manufacturers to patent new
+discoveries about manufacturing and other improvements.
+These included manufacturing methods like using just the right level of
+acid to precipitate out insulin and inventions like neutral protamine
+Hagedorn or NPH---an insulin that lasts longer and requires fewer
+injections.
+
+[https://www.healthline.com/diabetesmine/history-of-insulin-costs]
+
+This animal insulin worked fine for sixty years, mostly without the
+massive price hikes we see today. [cite]
+In the 1980s, scientists figured out how to use the bacterium E. coli to
+create human insulin.
+Insulin is a protein---a small biological machine made of 51 different
+parts, called amino acids, that change how it's shaped.
+Insulin travels through the bloodstream and, by fitting into another
+protein, tells cells to use more energy (sugar).
+Remarkably, the genetic code for this machine is readable and understood
+by every living thing, so the gene can be spliced into bacteria for
+mass-production.
+Insulin is what gets sugar from blood into the cells that need it to
+function---which is why when it's not there, blood sugar runs high.
+But human insulin, when used as an injection, only lasts for 6 hours and
+hits a significant peak halfway through, meaning that it doesn't work
+great for maintaining a consistent "blood glucose" level like the
+pancreas.
+Like with pork insulin, the drug companies invented a long-acting
+insulin that takes a whole 36 hours to get used up.
+It's called insulin glargine, or Lantus, or Toujeo, or Basaglar, and
+it's a medical miracle.
+Modified insulin is still compatible with the cells' detection system,
+and by changing only three amino acids to let in a little bit less water
+and a little bit more protection, insulin patients get to live a
+markedly better life.
+
+[Section: The profit motive]
+
+But glargine's a bittersweet victory.
+Glargine costs about seven dollars to manufacture ten
+milliliters, but Sanofi, Lantus's manufacturer, lists it for 375.
+Even for people with insurance, this can still cost 50 dollars in
+copay---for something that needs to be refilled 24 times a year.
+The FDA-approved early-launch alternative, Basaglar, is 165 for the same
+amount, but it's the *one* alternative, launched by another
+pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly.
+Affordable insulin relies on precarious manufacturer rebates and full
+employment, but even with these preconditions, 25% of patients report
+trying to "stretch" their insulin---probably because the average
+diabetic pays twenty thousand per year for medical care.
+
+But how did they get this position? Does the government just not care?
+Last year, Sanofi spent four million dollars on lobbying.
+Eli Lilly spent seven million.
+PhRMA, the industry lobbying group that both are members of: 29 million.
+Government-granted patent monopolies drive up prices for everyone,
+to the exclusive benefit of ten massive multinationals.
+Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Merck, another pharma company trying to get in on
+the glargine action, spend 6 billion each on R&D, but who paid for it?
+
+[Section: Anti-trust and Patents]
+
+The pharmaceutical problem has ballooned in the last decade, but it
+started in the 80s, and patents are a big reason why.
+Generic markets are not magically materializing, and it's because
+companies worth 169 billion were allowed to exist: they lobbied for
+"regulations" that actually made it harder for generics to enter with
+the FDA.
+It costs about one billion dollars to bring a new drug to market, and
+about the same to create a "biosimilar."
+The courts no longer consider patents a potential tool for monopoly
+manipulation that should be regulated but rather the government saying
+explicitly "you deserve to be a monopoly."
+
+[cite nber]
+
+60 pharmaceutical companies were allowed to merge into 10, which is
+clearly less risky and therefore should let R&D try out more
+experimental drugs which might take a while to come to market.
+But instead, incremental improvements are ever more popular.
+Everyone, on the right and on the left, agrees that the rapidly
+inflating drug prices are hurting Americans, but it's still happening.
+
+[Maybe include the "intellectual property is illegitimate" bit in the
+example about only three amino acids changing.]
+
+[Insert news headline of https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/white-
+house-insulin-cap-medicare/index.html]
+[And https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/28/insulin-pricing-becomes-top-
+issue-for-democrats/]
+
+[lord this needs a retelling. like a more chronological one, fuck]
+[needs some quotes too]
+
+[Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/
+Insulin_short-intermediate-long_acting.svg/2000px-Insulin_short-
+intermediate-long_acting.svg.png]
+
+[Image of insulin vial from Wikipedia]