Insulin: A Hundred-Year History

by Stuart Bradwel Narrated by Michael Langan

Overview

In 1922, researchers made one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century: insulin. Their discovery seemed miraculous. When it was given to diabetic patients on the brink of death, their condition rapidly improved.



However, this was no simple cure. Injections must be taken for life. Without them, symptoms quickly return, often with fatal results. But while a lifetime on insulin poses great challenges, it also offers opportunities. In this revelatory history, Stuart Bradwel looks back on one of medicine's most celebrated innovations. Setting professional narrative against subjective patient experience, he tells the story of a drug that has challenged many of the basic assumptions upon which medical practice is built, both inside and outside the clinic.



Nevertheless, Bradwel reminds us that the centenary of this apparent "wonder drug" should be no cause for celebration. Insulin often remains inaccessible to those who need it most: elusive prescriptions, uneven availability and sky-high prices result in rationing and desperate do-it-yourself research and development. In the face of bootstraps rhetoric and "Pharma Bro" capitalists, patients across the world are left to fend for themselves. There is a long way to go in the twenty-first century until insulin truly fulfills the extraordinary promises made by its discovery.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

10/02/2023

“The story of insulin is one that highlights the shortcomings of an inherently destructive economic system,” writes historian Bradwel in his meticulous debut. As early as 1552 BCE, diabetes was a documented disease that caused patients to waste away while passing copious amounts of urine. It wasn’t until 1889 that two German scientists, Oskar Minkowski and Josef Von Mering, realized the role of the pancreas as a manufacturer of insulin, and that those suffering from diabetes were lacking in the hormone. In the 1920s, Toronto researchers Charles Best, Frederick Banting, and James Colip developed a way to extract insulin from animal pancreases and inject it into diabetic patients, balancing their sugar levels. Over the next 100 years, this process was perfected as the development of insulin shifted from animal-based to synthetic. Meanwhile, doctors began to understand the two types of the disease, Types 1 and 2, and the role lifestyle and food choices play in treatment. However, despite now being a very treatable condition, diabetes has remained a death sentence for many in the U.S. because of severe overpricing by the three major companies that produce insulin, and widespread lack of access to healthcare. Bradwel’s scientific narrative is accessible and accompanied by intriguing details about the social and cultural history of the disease. The result is a cogent history that also exposes the inadequacy of current medical systems. (Sept.)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159303783
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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