Reminder: China developed a cure for diabetes & American pharma companies donβt want to adopt it because theyβre making tons of money selling insulin.
Video Transcript AI Summary
Reports from China indicate scientists may have found a diabetes cure, which is unwelcome news for the American pharmaceutical industry. Chinese patients receiving experimental stem cell therapy have stopped needing insulin after about eleven weeks. This poses a threat to companies like Eli Lilly, who profit greatly from the insulin market.
The rising insulin prices have sparked controversy, especially considering insulin's inventor, Frederick Banting, sold the patent for $1, believing it should be accessible to everyone. A diabetes cure would reduce the demand for insulin, impacting pharmaceutical companies' profits. This reveals a contradiction within the American for-profit healthcare system, where cures are disincentivized if they eliminate the need for repeat customers, challenging the notion that capitalism always promotes innovation.
Speaker 0: So there are reports out of China now that scientists have found a cure for diabetes, and the American pharmaceutical industry is not happy about it. There are now examples of Chinese patients receiving this experimental stem cell therapy and after about eleven weeks no longer requiring insulin, which I imagine is something that sounds amazing to people with diabetes, no longer having to poke yourself. But it doesn't sound amazing to giant American pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly who currently dominate the insulin market and use it to make billions of dollars. And this has been very controversial as they regularly increase the price of insulin knowing that it's a necessary commodity that people with diabetes need to survive. And this is extra disgusting because the inventor of insulin, Frederick Banting, originally sold a patent for $1 saying that insulin doesn't belong to me.
It belongs to the world. And if people can be cured of diabetes so they no longer need insulin, obviously, that would really cut into the demand for this product and cut into their profits. And here we see the contradictory nature of the for profit American health care system. Innovation and advancements in medical technology are actually disincentivized if they have the potential to cure the patient and make it so they're no longer a repeat customer for the pharmaceutical industry. So much for capitalism promoting innovation and socialism destroying it.
In reality, it's the opposite.
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